Drug busts no gauge of prevalence, police admit

JAKARTA (JP): City police have recorded 412 drug cases in the first seven months of this year, an officer said on Tuesday.

Jakarta Police spokesman Lt. Col. Zainuri Lubis said the figure was meaningless since there were hundreds of such cases which went unrecorded during the same period.

He, therefore, believed that the accurate number was much higher than the figure recorded by his office, which supervised the entire capital and Bekasi, Depok and Tangerang.

"If Indonesia is a hot market for drugs, then Jakarta is the core of the nation's drug network.

We're doing our best, but what's the use of all our work if drug dealers are able to leave jail in no more than six months, whereas they're actually guilty and sentenced to years in jail," Zainuri told reporters.

"Some even come out after three months, and that's it. They begin their drug businesses all over again. Our work is to catch the dealers, but what are the law institutions doing?"

Quoting city police data, Zainuri said that the number of drug cases handled by the police had shown a frightening increase in the past four years.

In 1995, for example, the number of drug cases handed over to the prosecutor's office totaled 194. It grew to 249 cases the following year, and soared to 605 in 1997, with 632 cases last year, he said.

Drug cases reported to the police by the public remained at an average of between 200 and 500 cases per year during the 1995 - 1998 period.

"Unless every drug dealer or drug user serves the entirety of his or her sentence, there is nothing much that can be done to curb the growth of drug sales in the capital," Zainuri said.

"I totally agree that drug offenders should be awarded with death sentences. We cannot get tough on drugs just by preaching."

Article 60 of Law No.5/1997 on psychotropic substances carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in jail or a fine of up to Rp 200 million (US$26,666).

Meanwhile, a staffer at the National Police Forensic Laboratory (Puslabfor) said he and his colleagues, including those stationed at other similar laboratories nationwide, handled an average of 300 drug cases per month.

"One drug case usually involves more than one person. When we say we have our hands full with drug cases, we are not joking," the staffer, who asked for anonymity, said.

Aside from the popular use of designer drugs, such as ecstasy and shabu-shabu (crystal metamphetamine), Jakarta has also witnessed a significant growth in the smuggling of dried marijuana into the city this year.

One of the biggest hauls in a single raid by Jakarta Police detectives in the past few years was last month's seizure of nearly 1.5 tons of marijuana from Medan, North Sumatra, worth about Rp 3 billion ($428,570) hidden in 12 sealed oil drums.

City police chief of detectives Col. Alex Bambang Riatmodjo said four Acehnese had organized the delivery of the marijuana- filled oil drums into the capital from Medan.

In early October, Penjaringan Police detectives in North Jakarta seized 929 kilograms of marijuana, worth about Rp 1.85 billion from four of seven suspected drug dealers, also in a single raid.

In mid-September, police here confiscated 602 kilograms of marijuana with an estimated street value of Rp 1.2 billion from four suspects. (ylt)