600 desk-bound police given riot training

JAKARTA (JP): The city police are training 600 personnel from non-operational units to back up the limited resources available for handling mass disturbances, particularly to deal with unrest expected before and during the 1997 general election.

According to participants, they have been trained in various operational skills every day for the past few months.

Equipped with sticks and batons, the personnel, ranked from corporal to sergeant, come from units such as administration and finance.

"It's normal in the Armed Forces to do such activities, what we call Panggilan Luar Biasa (Emergency Call)," Jakarta Metropolitan Police Chief Maj. Gen. Hamami Nata told reporters yesterday.

"In an emergency situation, we could call any of our personnel to take part in field operations without having to disturb daily activities at headquarters," he said. "In this way all officers of nonoperational departments get operational skills which might be needed at any time.

"We feel that the city actually needs at least 20,000 police personnel so we must utilize the 16,000 officers we have as efficiently as possible."

According to Hamami, all the 600 non-operational staff were deployed to back up the operational personnel during the July 27 riots.

"Then they got on-the-spot training," said the officer. The city police chief announced an alert situation to subordinates during the riots in which at least five people were killed and dozens of cars and many buildings were burned.

Most of the 16,000 on-alert personnel were not allowed to leave their stations for more than a week following the rioting. (bsr)