A nation is transfixed on the actions of two persons on one individual, yet the effects extends to all Malaysians. Policing in Malaysia is a qualified failure. No one likes them, and everyone fears them. We fear them because they can take us away anytime they want to. And before the bureaucrats in Putrajaya nod in agreement, they better know that they made this monster.

Malaysians do think they could be dragged from their houses with no recourse, because the finest and sharpest of Malaysians have been dragged from their houses with no recourse, over the years.

Come off it. The Barisan Nasional likes the idea of a strong, unaccountable police force under them for it makes all their threats all the more credible - word of power is more crucial than the word of law or any mediocre constitution.

A thinking police force with a high regard for the law of the land, might require denying the high-handedness that pleasures Ministers. If it were a thinking police force, it would think that acts of electoral fraud are criminal, irrespective of who is doing it.

If it were a thinking police force, it would not develop files on social activists that have no violent background to help the prime minister develop intelligence on his political foes. If it were a thinking police force, it would not continually harass every foreign manual worker because they are easy targets.

If it were a thinking police force, it would not treat every suspect as a tried, convicted and sentenced felon. Decency is for all. That they advance probable cause before hauling people into police trucks, and not do so just to meet the arrests quota for the month.

But it does, because it can, and the only reason most Malaysians stand for it is because they take us away one at a time. It is only the families that cry and rant, with media barred from pursuing the police for their follies. Since it is an unthinking force, all good has long dissipated in it.

The system is wrong, and it is run by cruel and worse, unimaginative people.

Is the prime minister not privy to these things having served as a minister since the 1980s? If anything, the shape of the police as it stands surely aided him in rising within the country's power corridors.

To the police chiefs and ministers, reducing a person through public and physical rituals is probably cruel and unusual, and something they would never wish for their children. However since their children are never gathered without basis and abused, it can't be that bad. Sometimes using this tool they do catch the common criminal. That must count for something, eh?

This begs the question. I can see the value of removing all clothes and then opening all the orifices to completely know what everyone is carrying. I am just not sure whether the unbelievable cost it bears down on everyone subjected to the treatment justifies it.

I don't want it, no one reading this wants it, so if Mr Policemen wants to do it, he or she better be sure that I was carrying something with a level of certainty before they get intimate with me. That is the underlying issue of the whole matter.

When dealing with the public, does the public matter? The prevailing dictum is that, the public does not matter as much as public policies that the Barisan Nasional postulates. So the bulldozing of many rights in order to appear protecting and serving, is more important than actually protecting and serving.

It seems more and more, the police are there to fix society into the vision their masters have for the nation. It is distant and distasteful. The path to change must be one of acquiring justice as well dispensing it. Policemen must be seen as partners of communities, who set a high moral standard for themselves before they set one for the people they protect.

It is the improvement of overall human quality of life which policemen are committed to, therefore their acts must be consistent with upholding the many; protecting the many without harming the very people they intend to protect.

Policing is as much about strength as it is about care. Without a heart, all the best intentions will fall wayside to personal greed and contempt. The police itself must initiate self-regulating processes to observe the way policing occurs, peer evaluation of events, psychiatric support, legal education and moral leadership.

One misguided procedure and an eager phone camera video file, may have just inevitably set a bankrupt institution down the part of repentance and forced renewal.