Maritime crimes sail unsolved for lack of boats

JAKARTA (JP): About 75 percent of criminals at sea around the Jakarta area have got away with their crimes due to the insufficient number of sea patrol boats, an officer revealed on Wednesday.

Head of the Jakarta Water Police unit Sr. Supt. Achmad Nazif said the existing patrol boats could not keep up with the growing number of crimes at sea, which mostly come in the form of smuggling and illegal fishing.

"We don't have enough high-speed power boats while the criminals mostly have powerful engine boats and the number of crimes at sea, especially those concerning stolen logs, have kept increasing," Achmad told The Jakarta Post after a ceremony marking the introduction of a new high-speed boat at the Water Police Headquarters in North Jakarta.

Last month alone, his office recorded 37 crimes that could have been solved by his personnel in their patrol area of the Java Sea. The cases, he said, mostly concerned stolen logs and illegal fishing activities carried out mainly by boats from Thailand.

Last week, Achmad added, his men managed to solve 11 sea crimes in their zone.

But the actual number of crimes committed was much higher, he added.

Last month, the police seized nine cargo ships carrying 5,315 cubic meters of logs believed to have been stolen from various forests in Sumatra and Kalimantan. The ships were about to unload the illegal logs at several ports in Jakarta and other coastal sites along the Java coast.

Achmad said that the insufficient number of high-speed boats was not only a problem in the capital.

"In eastern Indonesia, it's even worse because there has not been a single sea patrol in the last eight years," he said.

Achmad said the purchase of the new boat from a French manufacturer was expected to help police catch more criminals and reduce the number of crimes committed at sea.

Before the purchase of the 15-meter-long boat, Achmad said, the police only had nine 28-meter high-speed patrol boats which had a maximum speed of 26 knots.

The new boat has a maximum speed of 40 knots and a cruising speed of 32 knots.

Water Police chief Brig. Gen. Mudji Santoso said during the ceremony, which was also attended by National Police Chief Gen. Bimantoro that the new boat had been purchased for US$1.8 million plus another US$1.1 million for spare parts.

Mudji said that the funds used to purchase the boat had been taken from foreign exchange reserves.

Police actually purchased five similar boats but two of the boats would be handed over to the Riau Water Police and the other two would be operated by the East Kalimantan Water Police.

Mudji said the four boats would be operated in the two areas due to the high number of crimes committed at sea in these regions.

"Besides, those areas are close to the borders of neighboring countries. (Those countries) operate many patrol boats in their regions. It's embarrassing that we don't have enough boats in our area," Mudji said.(jaw)