Santai With The IGP

I wrote this on Malaysia Online or The Mole about  a chat session with the IGP Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar at a restaurant in Shah Alam on Tuesday. 

KUALA LUMPUR, May 21, 2015 : You’d be silly to turn down an invitation to chat with the country’s top cop. Never mind if you’d been told that more than 40 people would also be there. You want to ask him things and you want to know his answers.

Dubbed  Santai Dengan IGP,  ( relaxing with the IGP) Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar met with  some 40 twitter users, most of whom are his online friends as well as journalists and bloggers at Pine 38 restaurant in Shah Alam on Tuesday, 

 Like many Malaysians, three issues deeply affect me - crime, education and health care - and not necessarily that order. But in the last few of years, crime has been a riveting issue  and one close to my heart. 

Crime involving children is closest to my heart. In 2007, I was part of a group of bloggers spearheading and pushing for the setting up of NURIN (Nationwide Urgent Response Information Network) Alert,  following the rape and murder of eight year-old Nurin Jazlin Jazimin.

Nurin was abducted near her home in Wangsa Maju, Kuala Lumpur on Aug 20 that year and her brutalised body in a gym bag was found almost a month later on Sept 17 in Petaling Jaya. Her killer was never found and remains at large.

NURIN Alert is based on AMBER (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) Alert , an early warning alert system on missing children set up following the abduction and murder of nine year-old Amber Hagerman in Arlington, Texas in 1996.

It was approved by Cabinet in 2011 as  NUR Alert (National Urgent Response Alert) although I am no sure how it is being implemented.

Then, there came a period right here in the Klang Valley about five years ago when people were jolted out of their comfortable life with what seemed like an outbreak of crime - incidents of violent armed daylight robbery and house break-in. 

It had to happen that I became a robbery victim one night in my neighbourhood of Taman Tun Dr Ismail in Kuala Lumpur in April, 2013. The perpetrators were four men - one armed with a parang. This came after my youngest sister, Nina and her eldest daughter, Sara were robbed outside their home in Section 16, Petaling Jaya by four armed men on two motorcycles in December 2012. Nina and Sara were in their car. 

Folks around me and wherever I went seemed to know of someone close or other who had been robbed or had their homes broken into. 

It needs to be said here that confidence in the police to fight crime seemed to be on the low at that time. You can see the police-bashing on social media. So much so that people were reluctant to even report crime, convinced that it would be futile to do so.

So, that Tuesday the IGP arrived on time, looking cool and casual in a short-sleeved light blu