Police do more spying than fighting crime, decries MP

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It is questionable how the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM) could have received a marked increase in its budget, as announced by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak last week in his Budget 2016 speech.

This is because the men in blue under Najib’s administration have only shown a better capacity in intelligence work and political spying.

As a result, said Bukit Mertajam MP Steven Sim, police are becoming less able to solve crimes.

Based on his research, the intelligence reports by PDRM have increased in recent years.

“From 2010 onwards, PDRM produced an average of roughly 1,000 intelligence reports per day," he said in a statement today.

“These reports definitely include information gathered from political spying, especially on the opposition."

Disappointingly, however, since Najib took power in 2009, the number of criminal cases successfully closed by PDRM dropped from 93,431 cases a year to a mere 59,400 cases a year, said Sim, a reduction of almost 40 percent.

As such, from 2009-2015, with the exception of 2014, less than half the case files opened were closed each year.

In 2014, only 50.1 percent case files were successfully closed.

Big jump in allocation

Najib last Friday announced a RM7.98 billion supply allocation for the police.

Sim, however, pointed out since Najib tabled his first budget for 2010, supply for PDRM has jumped almost 80 percent, by a whopping RM3.5 billion over a period of seven years.

“While its development budget fluctuates over the years in the same period, 2016 will see an increase of nearly 55 percent, or over RM201 million, from 2015.

The top three items in this category are spending on PDRM headquarters (RM135 million), airplanes (RM109 million) and information technology system (RM84.4 million).

Meanwhile, Sim said the country indeed has enough police officers to deal with public safety.

Citing a parliamentary answer by the home minister on Oct 19, PDRM has 130,115 personnel.

“This means, given Malaysia’s population of about 30 million, the police to citizen ratio is about 1:230, which is better than the standard recommended by Interpol at 1:250.

“In other words, we have enough police officers to deal with public safety.

“However, with the strength of PDRM being diverted by the government to political spying, and other activities such as social media monitoring, PDRM risks losing its focus to fight crime…," he added.



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