What is the point of Foreign Affairs Minister Syed Hamid Albar " promising to look very seriously" into allegations against police in the Palm Court affair if he has already pre-judged the issue ("They were just performing their duty according to the law.")?

This is ridiculous. It's just another example of a Barisan Nasional politician taking the public for fools, because he knows from experience that no matter how preposterously and insultingly he behaves, he will get away with it.

The attitude of impunity filters down through the police force also. o­ne thing that always strikes me about crime reports in the mainstream Malaysian media is how they always read like police press releases, with no real reportage or investigation involved.

The assumption is that the police are always above reproach. Yet find me any Malaysian citizen who does not have at least o­ne immediate family member who has paid a bribe to a law enforcement officer.

Isn't acceptance of a bribe a serious crime, an offence? The practice is rife! What does that imply about the police force and the kind of ethical standards we can expect from them? Sure, it's tangential to what happened in Brickfields, but to me it's symptomatic of the rot.