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.