The police have started arresting Ah Longs or loan sharks under the Emergency Ordinance, which provides detention without trial, said Deputy Internal Security Minister Noh Omar today.

"There are some that we have already detained under the Emergency Ordinance," he added, without providing a specific figure or information on when these arrests were made.

He said if the police have insufficient evidence to arrest loan sharks under common laws, then preventive detention is used.

"The police will use whatever laws available but if they do not have sufficient evidence to arrest them under ordinary regulations, we will tell them to use the Emergency Ordinance," he told reporters at the Parliament lobby.

Under the Emergency (Public Order and Prevention of Crime) Ordinance of 1969 - just like the Internal Security Act - the police can detain individuals without trial for 60 days, which could then be extended to two years upon orders of the Internal Security Ministry.

The deputy minister dismissed concerns that the law and its practice infringed upon human rights as the safety and interests of society overrides the liberties of the individual.

"If these people are threatening the safety of people to the extent that there are hundreds of people living in fear, we will detain them first.

"What is more important, the individual rights of these Ah Longs or the rights of the people?"he asked.

Becoming bolder

According to Noh, the authorities would intensify their efforts in view of the increasing boldness of such groups to threaten members of the public, including police officers.

"If it's come to a stage where they are threatening the police, it is as if they are bigger/higher than the police themselves," he said.

He was referring to recent reports that loan sharks had threatened Selangor CID head Abu Bakar Mustafa .

"I believe the stronger the threat, the more the police will be resolved to (curb this menace)," he said, adding that a special task force has been set up by the Bukit Aman federal police headquarters for this purpose.

In the Dewan Rakyat earlier, the deputy minister spoke of the need to augment the police force in view of the disparate ratio of the population to the number of police personnel.

He said Selangor, in particular, suffered from a low number of police personnel in relation to the number of people that they are tasked to protect.

"The total population of Selangor is 3.947 million. The police force in the state contingent numbers at 7,194, which renders the ratio of police personnel to the Selangor population at one police personnel to 548 people," he told the House.