Not only should the police explain why they said the country's police-to-population ratio is 1:3,000 when it is 1:300, they must now explain why there is a gross misallocation of police personnel in certain urban areas.

DAP leader Lim Kit Siang said today that the police should admit their error on the widely reported 1:3,000 police to population ratio instead of seeking to evade the issue.

Bukit Aman director of management Kamaruddin Ali told The Star today about the grave shortage of police in built-up areas such as Subang Jaya in Selangor, where the police to population ratio is 1:10,870.

According to Kamaruddin, there were only 46 police officers including those staffing the enquiry desk, lock-up and on general duty while the Subang Jaya's population is about 500,000.

In Johor Bharu, the ratio is 1:9,254 as the city's police station has only 87 officers for a population of 805,152.

Different issues

Lim said that the police to population ratio for whole country is a different issue from the police to population ratio in urban centres.

"I fully agree that the police to population ratio for the urban areas as mentioned by Kamaruddin is most shocking and should be rectified immediately...," said the opposition leader in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport before departing for Kota Kinabalu.

But he said the police should explain why they made the serious mistake of misinforming the deputy prime minister that the national police to population ration is 1:3,000 when it is actually 1:300.

Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who is also home minister, told reporters last Saturday that the country planned to hire 23,000 officers to beef up the police force as the current 1:3,000 police to population ratio is high compared to the 1:300 in many developed countries.

However, Lim said on Tuesday that with 80,000 police officers in a country with a population of 23 million, the ratio is closer to 1:300, putting Malaysia among those in the world with the lowest police to population ratio.

Misdeployment of police resources

The opposition leader has, in the past few days, lambasted the government and the police force for issuing different data on the force.

Today, he argued that the statistics on the number of police personnel in the urban areas has revealed another major problem - the gross misallocation of resources in the force.

"Malaysia is very far behind other foreign capitals as far as police to population ratio is concerned as for example, New York with less than 45,000 police personnel has a ratio of 1:197, London with 24,000 police personnel has a ratio of 1:285, Berlin 1:124, Shefield 1:545, and Manchester 1:376," he said.

"Something is clearly very wrong with the sense of priority and deployment of police resources when Malaysia - which have a more favourable national police to population ratio than United Kingdom, United States and Germany - has such an outrageous police to population ratio for its urban areas...," added Lim.

Lim called for a full audit of the deployment and productivity of the entire police force and the misallocation of police personnel and resources.

The opposition leader has earlier criticised the misdeployment of the police resources, which is used to protect the political regime instead of protecting Malaysians.

The effectiveness of the police force has been put on the spotlight after the brutal abduction, rape and murder of Canny Ong two weeks ago.