'Shoot first' only with clear evidence, says CID chief

VIDEO | 1:32 mins

Bukit Aman CID chief Hadi Ho Abdullah has defended Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s ‘shoot first’ remark, saying the minister was urging police personnel to act in self-defence should there be any “clear evidence”.

The “clear evidence” that Hadi Ho (left) was referring to are instances where the suspected criminals had fired shots at the security forces.

“If you look that what the minister said, you must take it in its full context. He said if there is clear, clear evidence.

“In this instance, if the police go for a raid and the criminal fires shots, flashes out his firearm and shoots at us, that is clear,” Hadi told a press conference today.

He said that he had never received nor heard about the ‘shoot first, question later’ instruction since he joined the police  force almost 40 years ago.

“(Please) ask any of the officers. We have never received such an instruction, we had never heard of it before,” Hadi added.

Zahid has come under fire for his recent speech in Malacca last Saturday, where he had urged the police to “shoot first” if they had the evidence of suspected criminals.

He clarified this in an interview with Astro Awani yesterday, saying that the infamous remark referred to the fatal shooting of five suspected mobsters by police in Penang on Aug 19.

Hadi said police would give a warning in advance to a suspect, if they have the opportunity to do so.

“(But) sometimes when you go in, even before you can warn them, they shoot at you.

“So what do you want to do? (To tell them) ‘Please don’t shoot, if you shoot again then I will shoot you’? It doesn’t happen that way,” he said.

Hadi said the police followed a “very strict” standard operating procedure (SOP) in terms of self-defence, as stated under the Penal Code.

“So, if (we are) in a situation where the criminal is firing, what do you expect the police to do? To run away from the scene? To wait until he is trying to slow down and talk to him to (persuade him to) put down his gun? I don’t think so.

“We follow a strict SOP where we have the right of defence,” he said, adding that there were cases where police personnel had been charged because they had fired without following the law.

Hadi said he would be very grateful to have a person “teach” police how they should react when dealing with such a situation.

Thus, he was also confident that society would prefer the criminal to be shot instead of police.

“You want the policemen to die or action to be taken against the criminal? Which one do you like?” he questioned.

‘No VIP involved in Tiga Line’

On a separate matter, Hadi denied that the Umno leaders whom Zahid had named during the same event are members of the Tiga Line underworld gang.

“I can tell you the names he mentioned, those few VIP names, we have checked, they are not members of Tiga Line, Double 7 or Pekida.

“Of course, if any VIP is member of these, we would have noticed it already. So those names he mentioned were never on the list of the members of this illegal society.

“If they were, then we whould have arrested them. The minister also told us, if he were among the members and he committed a crime, we should arrest him,” Hadi said.

In his speech, Zahid had claimed that the four Umno election candidates who were present with him at the event are members of Tiga Line.

He also referred, in a joking manner, to Umno supreme council candidate Shahidan Kassim, one of those present, as the “biggest Tiga Line gangster”.

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