Focus on Medan's Godfather, his pals and victims

Focus on Medan's Godfather, his pals and victims

By Donna K. Woodward

MEDAN (JP): His name is known across the Medan community,
though it tends to be whispered. He keeps a low profile, yet his
reach extends everywhere. His arrivals at ceremonies and events
are often through back doors, but ostentatiously accompanied by
an entourage of bodyguards and friends taxied in a fleet of
vehicles bearing his distinctive, initialed license plates.

Like other low-life figures in history's crime annals, this
one has a reputation embellished by apocrypha, and claims that a
special spell put on him at birth bars him from marrying.

There are tales of generosity confirmed by the large tips he
dispenses and the lavish receptions he arranges for family
members' graduations or weddings. He consorts with the town's
most notorious collection of thugs as well as with illustrious
members of our local security forces.

It is he, not the police, to whom local businessmen often turn
for protection, with his pemuda (youth) group of bullies.
Regardless of who holds the positions of official authority in
Medan, all pay their respects to this man, and in turn receive
his patronage.

Residents refer to him as the Godfather. And like the old
Mafia dons of New York or Chicago, this man too has so far been
untouchable by police and prosecutors. Untouchable, or only
untouched?

Medan was recently shattered by the fatal shootings by police
of two university students. The incident was triggered by alleged
gambling. Instead of focusing on the Godfather of gambling and
prostitution and his cronies, police are preoccupied with
easy-to-arrest, petty gamblers found on campuses and at food
stalls.

While the Godfather offers businesses protection-for-a-price,
the police protect the Godfather -- or so it seems. And purveyors
of gambling, prostitution, drugs, illegal weapons, and extortion
operations are given carte blanche to operate.

Wouldn't it make more sense for the police to put the
Godfather out of business?

He is not hard to find, yet the police of Medan are unable or
unwilling (or both) to put an end to the criminal activities of
Medan's most honored gangster. What can be done?

During the Prohibition era in the U.S., when organized crime
proved too much for the regular, often corrupt American police,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation formed a special unit of
elite crime fighters with an irreproachable reputation for being
incorruptible, the Untouchables.

Perhaps this is what Medan needs, a new crime force that will
be trained properly, paid properly, supervised properly -- in a
context of zero tolerance for corruption, beyond the cheap
temptations offered by the Godfather.

Indonesia has many young, idealistic job seekers looking for
work that will make them feel proud of themselves and their
country. Instead of maintaining the youth groups, why not appoint
some promising police commander to form a corps of competent,
trustworthy law enforcement officers?

Perhaps some of the countries that now offer large sums to
train the Indonesian Military in tactics that have sometimes been
used in questionable military activities, instead might channel
funds into a pilot training program for the civilian police.

For in reality domestic crime, not danger from without, is the
real threat to Indonesian security. Indonesia's whole law
enforcement system, from the lowest level of police work to the
Supreme Court, needs reformation; at the higher end it seems that
the wheels of reform have been set in motion.

But the Medan Police are still immune from reform, as many
businesspeople of North Sumatra could confirm, if only they
would.

The authorities might also take steps to disband the so-called
youth groups that now prop up the enterprises of people like
Medan's Godfather.

Our Godfather would not have the cadres he needs to run his
protection racket so easily, were it not for the youth group he
is allied with. The government might at least withdraw the
official sponsorship which gives such groups a quasi-official
role in the eyes of the community.

Too many youth group members are quick to use their status to
intimidate residents and small shopkeepers for purposes of
legalized extortion.

At times persons who prefer to remain anonymous use these
groups to provoke civil unrest. While there may have been a time
in Indonesia's early history for these groups, now as the
government is attempting to build a civil society and control
excessive use of force and abuse of power, their place in the
community seems questionable at best.

Some politicians believe that if these groups were not given
their paramilitary type uniforms and permitted to carry out their
petty extortions, they might commit worse crimes. This is an
inadequate, pathetic solution to the problem of crime. Create
real jobs for young men. To allow them to become parasites of
both the government and their communities serves no purpose
except to create an underclass of men who prey on the system.

Instead of shooting at students, will the Medan Police
authorities do something responsible and effective about illegal
gambling? Students' demands for an end to illegal gambling are
becoming more urgent, and larger numbers are joining
demonstrations.

The problems of organized criminal activity and community
backlash are not confined to Medan. But if the next explosion of
community vigilantism occurs in Medan, the interethnic
repercussions could be calamitous.

The credibility of the Medan Police, and indeed of all
Indonesian Police, in fighting organized crime is at a crisis
point. For the sake of domestic peace the police must establish
their bona fides as honest law enforcement agents. No doubt the
Godfather has the police over a barrel: if they touch him, he can
definitely tell some interesting tales about them.

Maybe it is time to offer members of the public rewards and
government protection in exchange for their cooperation in
fighting mafia-like crime in Medan. Maybe it is time for the
National Police chief to offer Medan's new police head only two
options: pursue evidence sufficient to lead to an arrest of the
Godfather within 90 days, or resign.

The writer, an attorney and former American diplomat at the
U.S. Consulate General in Medan, is president director of PT Far
Horizons management consultancy firm.