AGO, police to boost cooperation
AGO, police to boost cooperation
Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
In an effort to boost coordination between the Attorney General's
Office (AGO) and police, newly installed National Police chief
Gen. Sutanto paid a visit to Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh
on Wednesday.
The four-star police general said that his visit was aimed at
improving the working relationship between the AGO and the police
force after he was sworn in as the new police chief.
"I am the new guy here and I have to introduce myself to him
(Abdul Rahman)," Sutanto said.
He said that during the meeting, he and the Attorney General
discussed ways of streamlining the criminal justice process.
"As a team we should have one vision and mission to ensure
that the law is enforced seriously. We will follow up on this
meeting and we will also boost coordination at the lower levels,
so that our talks will not stop at this level only," Sutanto
said.
The AGO and National Police have been harshly criticized for
their poor coordination in dealing with many criminal cases.
Prosecutors often return case files prepared by police,
claiming that the dossiers were incomplete.
This has led to many delays in bringing accused persons to
court.
As an example, the case file of businessman Adrian Waworuntu,
who was convicted in a lending scandal involving Rp 1.7 trillion
from state-owned Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI), was returned a
total of seven times by prosecutors.
Dossiers of suspects in a graft case at the State Logistics
Agency (Bulog) over the procurement of poultry feed took more
than a year for the police to complete after being rejected five
times by prosecutors.
Whenever case files are rejected, police investigators often
blame prosecutors for not giving them sufficiently detailed
instructions on what was lacking, while prosecutors blame police
for not properly preparing the dossiers.
More cooperation between the two legal authorities would save
time and money, as well as improving efficiency in processing
criminal cases from the police all the way to court.
"We must be able to overcome the obstacles during the process,
so we can send the case files to court as soon as possible and so
courts can hand down fair verdicts, as is desired by the public
in general," Sutanto said.
He added that all crimes, including corruption cases, should
be responded to faster by prosecutors and police investigators.
"So far the coordination between the two sides is good, but we
want it to be better and we should improve it in the near future
by creating good communications between the two," Sutanto said.