WE humbly refer to the column by Wan Saiful Wan Jan, chief executive of The Institute For Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) titled "Answering To The People" (The Star, June 7).
The article which hinges heavily on efforts to strengthen the fight against crime, concluded with a key point by the author, that a decentralised police force "makes abuse of powers less easy because no one person can wield control on all the men and women with guns in the country".
The Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) have always held in high regard, those who have shown much interest and passion, in helping to reform the RMP. It is for this reason that we try to appreciate the musing by the esteemed Wan Saiful Wan Jan, in reflection to what a delegate had brought to light, during the launching of the #nyahkorupsi campaign.
It is widely known that police organisations around the world form a wide spectrum - where the national police forces of most countries in continental Europe represent extreme cases of the centralised model, and the police system of the United States which represents the decentralized extreme.
In between are hybrid cases such as Canada, where although the provinces of Ontario and Quebec have decentralized police systems, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has jurisdiction over the whole country. Police forces may also be classified as centralised or decentralised relative to each other.
For example, police organisations in Britain, including about 50 regional police forces in England, Scotland, and Wales, are generally considered decentralised. The British also has a domestic security service, the MI5 that bridges the customary gap between intelligence gathering and criminal policing. In fact, Scotland underwent the largest policing merger of the modern era where in 2014, all eight of its regional constabularies were replaced by just one Police Scotland, which is now the second largest force after the Metropolitan Police.
Whether the RMP should be organised as a national force, or as an organisation under a state government, or a local authority, is a matter on which there exist no one model around the world. In some countries like Maldives, the police and the army are unified.
There is no right or wrong way of doing things in this area. History, geography, economics and considerations of efficiency are all relevant factors. The United States and India are not good paradigms for Malaysia because they are geographically huge nations that require a decentralised force. Despite the decentralisation, the US constitution permits the president to "federalist the state police force to carry out national tasks.
In the US, state controlled police forces have often shown political bias. This was evident during the civil rights movement when some state governments opposed to desegregation, utilised the local police force to treat civil rights workers and protesters very brutally. A national police force as opposed to a state or local authority controlled force, has a much better chance of being non-political.
If the argument of a local force versus a national force is carried far enough, then the same could be asked for the military, navy, air force, anti-corruption commission, election commission and the auditor-general. The era of international communist subversion may have ended but it has been replaced by an age of global crime, global terrorism, global drug trading and smuggling.
- Comm Datuk Seri Zulkifli Abdullah, Director of Management, Royal Malaysia Police.
Full Article :The Star