Bogus policeman arrested

DENPASAR: An alleged drug dealer, who, by convincingly impersonating a high-ranking police officer, had once managed to scare away a narcotics detective, was arrested on Sunday along with a .38 caliber revolver and six ecstasy pills.

"We nabbed him this morning at the Scandal discotheque in Seminyak, Kuta," chief of Bali Police narcotics division Adj. Snr. Com. Bambang Sugiharto confirmed.

The suspect was identified as 33-year-old Nyoman Dwipayana Putra, the owner of a bookstore in downtown Denpasar.

A police source disclosed a recent incident, in which the suspect managed to elude a police search by claiming that he was a police captain and intimidating junior officers.

"The junior officers backed off and let him walk away untouched," the source said.

The suspect tried a similar tactic on Sunday morning when the six-member team, led by First Insp. Awan Hariono, surrounded his table.

This time, however, the suspect inflated his rank into that of a police commissioner of the Provost Division and even produced a photograph of himself wearing a police commissioner's uniform.

But the officers were not taken in and decided to arrest him, seizing the ecstasy pills and a revolver stashed in a cupboard in his house. -- JP