Another irksome game

With the crime rate in this country, especially Jakarta, rising ever higher, the police have had to redouble their efforts to curb the alarming trend. And so far police authorities have yet to devise an effective way to deal with the increasing rate of vehicle theft.

The most often heard police complaint is that the budget allocated by the government is barely enough to cover operational activities, while citizens keep demanding better service.

To overcome their financial difficulties the police have turned to licensing, which they now look to for another source of income. The people have thus been asked to share the police's financial burden but have yet to see any improvements in the licensing procedures. Those who have paid their vehicle tax personally in Jakarta, for example, know how tax payers are not very well respected.

At the vehicle tax office, which is managed by the police in cooperation with the local administration, the situation is truly appalling. The situation is even worse at the licensing office, where unauthorized middlemen, many of whom are on-duty officers, operate freely.

The police last year promised to modernize the system and reduce the frequency of the obligation to renew vehicle registration from once yearly to once every five years. This has yet to happen and the burden still lies squarely on the shoulders of the public.

A recent statement quoted the police as saying that steps were being taken to detect car thefts as early as possible is refuted by a fact that the police themselves have disclosed: Car theft has been on the rise lately.

Now as if to add insult to injury the police recently announced another controversial policy. They now want to impose an obligation on car owners to have their vehicles physically inspected by officers every time they renew their registration documents.

The police deputy chief of operational affairs, Maj. Gen. M. B. Hutagalung, said this week that the reason behind the new game is that without regular inspections, it is difficult for them to monitor the identity of a vehicle.

Is there any veracity behind this statement? Will the measure reduce the number of car thefts and raise people's hopes of finding their stolen cars? As the old saying here goes, "You need to sell your cow to finance police operations to find your lost goat."

It is worth remembering that one of the main police tasks is to serve the public as best as possible, not to burden them. Amidst the already-mentioned public frustrations, imposing this new obligation is really unthinkable for healthy-minded people. Nobody can guarantee that it will bring the crime rate down and the public will have to face an even more tangled web of bureaucratic procedures at the police station.

The authorities need to understand that the situation is already notoriously arduous as it is. The obligation to have your car engine checked from time to time is especially loathsome for the additional financial burden it imposes on the public.

This latest idea endorses the basic way of thinking among police officers in dealing with the public; that is, the presumption of guilt instead of the popularly-accepted presumption of innocence. The implication of the obligatory engine checks, in light of the number of criminals roaming around the city, is that all car owners are in possession of stolen vehicles. It is the same as banning a person from addressing a seminar for fear that he or she might say something to