Does Selangor Really Need Another (police) Force?

The Selangor Government has got to convince me that the state needs its own auxiliary police.

Right now I am not convinced.

According to Mentri Besar Khalid Ibrahim, the state government has already written to the Home Ministry for approval of the plan. It has not got a response yet.

Khalid said the state needs the auxiliary police because of the increasing crime rate in the state.

This, he said had created concern among the people and the state government wanted to seek a concrete solution to counter the problem.

"The people’s safety is the state Government’s priority and there is no reasonable excuse as to why the Federal Government has to reject our service in efforts to protect the people,” Khalid said.

He cited as examples recent incidents where two security guards were hacked to death in Damansara Perdana and an eight-month pregnant woman was allegedly assaulted.

Khalid also said the state’s intention was to assist the police to carry out crime prevention and not to take over their duties.

Certainly, the home ministry would need time to make a decision on such a matter. You can't be hasty in this sort of thing.

I'm a Selangorian. But I'm sure people in other states are just as concerned about rising crime rate.

I am heartened to know that measures have been taken to reduce the crime rate across the country. That's what Pemandu CEO Idris Jala said last month.

Anyway. I don't want an auxiliary police force in the state.

Sure, the setting up of one will help curb crime. But having it presents other problems, I foresee. So, at what cost?

The police should take the cue. Obviously the state government thinks that the police are not doing a good job or that the police really need help. Unless, of course, it has other motive. I'm not going to speculate.

But, I can't believe that the police force needs an auxiliary police force (of the state) to help it out.

If the police force is suffering from manpower shortage, then it has to find ways to overcome the problem.

Back to Idris Jala's report on the crime index.

The crime rate has been brought down. It is not ZERO crime rate, he said.

He said:

“The numbers we have from January to November show that crime has dropped – for every cousin who is robbed there are thousands of others who are not robbed. Zero crime only exists in heaven lah.”

He said the government has been working hard to reduce crime in the last 11 months, starting with the mobilisation of 14,222 police officers to 50 hotspots, mainly in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor. This was followed by the installation of 496 CCTVs and ranking of 753 police stations for their achievements.

These measures, he said, have worked as crime incidents in those hotspots have gone down.

Overall crime index and street crime fell by 16% and 38% between January and November this year as compared to the corresponding period last year.

But this is fast changing with the revelation of the positive police statistics, Idris believes. From January till November 2010, crime has dropped to 157,000 recorded cases from the 180,000 during the corresponding period last year.

So...there you are!