Da'i fears officers protected gambling house

Da'i fears officers protected gambling house

Abdul Khalik and Tony Hotland, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar suggested on Monday that
West Jakarta police officers may have protected a gambling house
in Taman Palem, which his officers raided two weeks ago.

The raid nearly triggered a pitched gun battle between
National Police officers and officers from the West Jakarta
police and City Police headquarters.

Da'i told a hearing with House commission III in charge of
human rights, legislation and security that internal affairs
officers were sent to the site following information that police
officers ordered to raid the house, owned by a person identified
only as Iwan K., were apparently not going to arrest the owner or
the gamblers.

"We started wondering why the West Jakarta police chief, who
should know what's going on in his own area, seemed to do nothing
to close down a very well-known gambling house operating in his
jurisdiction," Da'i explained.

He said that after a squad of intelligence officers was sent
to investigate the gambling house two weeks ago, they were met by
a group of West Jakarta and Jakarta police officers, and shots
were fired but nobody was reportedly injured.

He said the internal affairs investigators had questioned
several officers from the two precincts, trying to ascertain
whether or not the local policemen were aiding and abetting the
gambling operation.

Previously, internal affairs chief Insp. Gen Supriyadi said
Adj. Comr. Tarmo, the officer in charge of the city officers in
the raid, had been questioned, and they now suspected that he and
his men were indeed protecting the gambling house.

City police officers were sent to Taman Palem on Feb. 2 --
ostensibly to conduct a raid. Shortly thereafter, the detectives
from the National Police headquarters arrived, but it did not sit
well with the "raiding" officers.

An eyewitness said instead of arresting Iwan K. and the dozens
of gamblers at the site, several officers simply spoke in private
with Iwan in his office.

While Iwan and the officers were talking, another team from
internal affairs arrived and saw the detectives chatting with
Iwan.

As the internal affairs officers arrived, several of the local
cops unholstered their pistols and shot the ceiling, which
prompted the internal affairs officers to also fire their weapons
into the ceiling. Cooler heads prevailed and everybody apparently
went home, but there were reportedly no arrests made that night.

According to some sources, the Taman Palem gambling house
regularly paid Rp 3 billion to the West Jakarta police, the
Jakarta Police and the National Police each month for protection.

While many people have reported the existence of such gambling
dens to police in several areas of West and Central Jakarta, the
police routinely deny all the reports and claim they had raided
such places but found no evidence of gambling.

After the Feb. 2 shooting incident appeared in the mass media,
the police announced that they had arrested Iwan and 169 other
gamblers, but it is not clear when those arrests took place or
where they are being held.