En Zainul Arifin has written some remarks regarding the whole Police abuse scandal in the NST today, and you can find the link to the article here: “Let’s not miss the wood for the trees“. I’m wondering whether any of his points are fair; I’m sure they are, if we read his remarks without qualification. I tend to believe that the truth is stranger than fiction, and that when examined properly, it does appear that generalizations have a basis in some truth (who woulda thought I’d say this…), that is to say, confirming the perception of the people who either make these generalizations or believe these generalizations.

Anyway, I’ve got some spare time, so I thought I’d look at his article properly (or as much as my liquified brains can tahan).

I CANNOT help but feel that there has been too much police bashing lately with regard to the nude-squat incident. As some commentators perch on their high horses, critics, sensing blood and fleeting fame, are going for the kill.

Cute opening salvo. If you have a point about the police abuse scandal, you might be one of those commentators perched on high horses, you see, because he doesn’t say all of us are. Cute and generously ambiguous.

Obviously, there is little regard for the men and women in blue, as some of the comments were heavy on generalisation, unfair or just plain rude.

Now this I’ve got to agree with: we have been abusive, hurling insults at the police, disrespecting them, not being bothered about how they feel or how they’ll take it, etc. I’m sure there’s a lesson here about two wrongs not making a right, but I’ll just say it’s payment in kind.

Our policemen and women are not a sadistic lot. Let us not miss the wood for the trees.

Some information provided by the Asian Human Rights Commission seems to give a contrarian picture, and I suppose it’s up to us to decide which opinion is more… cogent. Of course, generalizations are never right, aren’t they, because for all we know, the lot reported above might be exceptions to the rule. But let’s not sell the generalization short: if the abuses recorded by the Asian Human Rights Commission reflect the truth, then it would appear, at the very least, that there has been a culture of abuse in place, reaching back to 1993.

The list of abuses itself is surely persuasive at the very least about opinions of the Police force. We’ll get to that point below, later.

If in fact strip searches and nude squats are indeed part of a standard operating procedure, but they offend our sensitivities to no end, then we must amend the rules. If we feel it infringes on the human rights of those being interrogated, that it is demeaning and pointless, then we must find a better way.

Well, I suppose some genius must have informed En Zainul how it’s possible to amend the rules to fit our very own social mores, and I’m sure the now dead and defunct Royal Commission on the Police has stated everything to that effect.

But seeing as how we live in a country where bullets tag along at snail’s pace, it’s no surprise the idea’s suddenly “come into being” in En Zainul. Einstein, this fella is. So, really, what’s stopping us from changing the rules?

Well, firstly, we’ll have to really debate the mandate provided by the CPC. Then we’ll have to debate the actual rules and standard procedures to sorta update it to the 21st century. Of course, none of this will happen without the shit hitting the proverbial fan in Malaysia, so En Zainul, thanks, the government now knows what it should do, and you know what we should do, and but for this scandal, everyone else in government will be carrying on as if nothing’s changed.

It is good that we are outraged. It is understandable that we would want changes. As a society, we should change constantly for the better. But we should do it because it is the right thing to do, and not because we fear Chinese tourists would not visit us any more.

OK, this bit above I don’t quite understand: is he speaking to the incumbent, or is he speaking to the public. I’m a bit confused: most naysayers out here in the hinterlands of cyberspace are crowing with delight now that Malaysia’s shit has hit China’s fan, you see, because if lokapgal was perceived as local, we’d have a cover up in two shakes of a fly’s ass.

Christ almighty, really, who’s concerned about Chinese tourists?! We don’t care, we just want justice, that’s all, because the point is, crap like ear-squats could happen to anyone. Stop trying to paint us as greedy, money-grubbing capitalists, thank you.

Or maybe he’s talking to PM Abdullah. Well, it’s about time, isn’t it?

Do we slam the entire legal profession because of a few crooked lawyers, or the medical fraternity as a money-obsessed group, or all retailers as cheats just because a few have their thumbs on the scales? And yet that is what many of us have been doing, moralising from our armchairs, ever since the video clip was pushed into our faces.

And that’s how you miss context, folks: not a few months since the Royal Commission released its report, not a few days before 3 Chinese women were forced to strip for, what was it, not having their passports, and sudddenly the video blossoms like an ugly wart on cyberspace. How do you expect people to react? Lawyers don’t shoot, torture or humiliate their clients (arguable, yes, but let’s not go there), greedy doctors charge you an arm and a leg but aren’t about to expose your sphincter muscles to see if you’ve got stuff lodged up your ass, and retailers who cheat often find themselves without customers.

It’s abuse, and the Police did it. Yes, I think we’re maintaining a sense of proportion here.

In keeping the peace, we are appalled at some of the things it does in our name, and now we are doubly ashamed about how it made us look to the rest of the world.

It’s a statement like the above that makes me think he’s a complete asswipe with oodles of space between his ears - or he’s got blinkers on. What keeping the bloody peace?!

Deep in our hearts, many of us must know that the police have on occasions bent the rules when dealing with people who have no regard for civil society or the law — thieves, kidnappers, rapists and murderers. But we chose to ignore it because the force delivers.

Our streets are safe. We can go to the automated teller machines or our favourite hangouts late at night without worrying too much about safety. As a nation, we are allowed to thrive because the lowly-paid mata-mata goes around on his bike making his presence felt, and that there are people whose job is to think day and night about the safety of fellow citizens. Yet, how many champions of human rights ever visit the widows of slain cops?

Think about it, it’s true, isn’t it? We all know what rapists face in lock-up, and we know what they’ll face in jail. That’s just street justice practiced by the police. Wait a second, did someone catch that? The kind of law these police practice is the law of a cowboy town. We don’t want that, we want a proper police with proper procedures who will respect even a murderer’s right to legal representation and all the other rights he maintains even when incarcerated for his own crimes.

If we had the rule of law strictly maintained and adhered to, there would still be problems, yes: citizens will sue for this or for that, and citizens will continue to bitch. But consider the alternative we’re living in now: you don’t have to be guilty to receive the short end of the baton if you’re held in lock-up. Due process is a joke and we have repressive laws that provide scanty basis for oversight (please don’t bring up referrals to magistrates after 24hrs, hor).

En Zainul is making the same damn argument Col Jessup makes when in the hotseat. “We can’t handle the truth”, apparently, because we live under the blanket of security the police provides, and En Zainul would rather we just say thank you and be on our way.

Tell that to people who are humiliated and who die in lock-up.

Everyone talks of police corruption and abuse of power, yet no one says anything about those who gave bribes or broke the law. There are probably more law breakers than enforcers — from petty misdeeds like double-parking to beating traffic lights and speeding, all the way to mayhem and murder.

And many would not hesitate to use money to get themselves out. The person who complains or gloats about having to bribe a policeman to escape a speeding ticket has no business assuming the moral high ground.

Talk about putting the cart before the horse: the police is there to ensure that we do the time if we do the crime, and if anything, the above abuses should be further damning evidence of the piss-poor policing carried out in our country, shouldn’t it? Is he now admitting that the Police are a bunch of corrupt thugs in uniform?

The police cannot be blamed for crime. It is society that breeds criminals. The police can try to prevent crime but often they are called to pick up the pieces after the fact and make sense out of them.

I like that. It’s obviously true: criminal elements arise out of a variety of factors, but it’s a given that conditions amongst the less able breed criminals. But if he’s just making a general point about where criminals come from, he’s forgetting why we have the police force in the first place: to protect us from these criminal elements and not protecting ourselves against the police. We pay the police to investigate, and to stop crime. We don’t pay the police to pick up the pieces, we pay the police to apply their tradecraft. And we certainly don’t pay the police to abuse us.

The rest of his article is an exercise in spewing diatribe, I suppose all the more to engage in fellow spewers of the same quality on the internet and elsewhere, ya? But while he says some realistic things about profiling, he veers dangerously close to saying we’ve only now become interested in police abuses because a Chinese was caught on video. Here’s what he says:

Have we suddenly developed a conscience? Are our hearts skipping a beat after seeing the grainy results of hidden camerawork? Do they disgust us so much that we would like to rid the force of most of the cops, as some suggested on websites? Are we being selective because the Chinese spend their money here?

I’m sorry, his focus on greed shouldn’t detract us from the fact that the above statement comes right after talking about profiling, racial or otherwise. I’ll leave you to decide what he means.