Catholic Bishop Dr Paul Tan Chee Ing said that the creation of the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) was the least the government could do to assuage widespread public apprehension that custodial deaths had reached alarming levels.

"Fifteen years on from the beating of a detained former deputy prime minister by an inspector general of police, we are still quibbling over the necessity of a measure that was plain at the time of that atrocity's occurrence," commented the head of the Catholic Church in the Melaka-Johor diocese.

azlan The outspoken prelate said that custodial deaths were only the latest and most alarming symptom of a "police force that has been dysfunctional from the time a former Bar Council president described it as trigger-happy and the then IGP riposted that the ordinary cops were not going to be willing sitting ducks."

The late and respected Raja Aziz Addruse, who helmed the Bar Council in the mid-1990s and was president of National Human Rights Society (Hakam), affixed the label "trigger-happy" on the force after a series of fatal shootings of criminal suspects in 1996.

Then IGP Rahim Noor was combative in response, explaining that his men disdained being soft targets for allegedly marauding criminals.

"That exchange juxtaposed two contrasting views - the sober one that police should strain to err on the side of caution with the rambunctious view that suspects cannot legitimately expect to be given an even chance in a system that presumes innocence before proven guilt," asserted the Jesuit-trained cleric.

Err on the side of prevention

Bishop Paul Tan said that exchange was emblematic of the diametrically opposed mind-sets that have conduced to the present situation where mounting custodial fatalities prompt an alarmed public to demand nothing less than the IPCMC as a remedy while a lackadaisical powers-that-be fend off the measure as unnecessary.

"It is a standoff with the chips falling mainly on the side demanding for the IPCMC because custodial mortalities have even included the death of a Japanese while he was under detention," said the bishop.

"This whole issue of police brutality has arrived at a point where a luminary is going to have his or her head knocked off before the IPCMC is seen as an imperative," he said.

"Better we err on the side of prevention rather than prevaricate today and lament tomorrow. I say that IPCMC is a measure whose time is now," argued the prelate.

"If torture in any form is considered internationally immoral, how much more torture that ends in death?" mused the bishop.