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.