Police chief meets U.S. Embassy reps

Police chief meets U.S. Embassy reps

JAKARTA (JP): City police chief Maj. Gen. Nurfaizi met with
three representatives from the U.S. Embassy at his office on
Wednesday.

Nurfaizi refused to give details of the meeting and only said
that "it was just a discussion".

One of the three men from the American Embassy told reporters
before leaving the police compound that the talk was about
"security assessment".

The identities of the U.S. envoys were also not available.

According to Nurfaizi, the Jakarta Police always welcome
commitment from any party to help enhance the quality of his
personnel, especially concerning the new dimension of crimes and
human rights issues these days.

"We are maintaining cooperation, including with the United
States of America, to increase our personnel's perspective on
cyber crimes, democratization and human rights," he said.

The cooperation, he said, focused more on the transfer of
knowledge.

The city police, for example, have sent officers to the United
States to learn about police matters from U.S. Federal Police.

On other occasion, "the U.S. Federal Police send tutors to
enhance our personnel's knowledge on human rights,
democratization and cyber crimes," Nurfaizi said.

The American government, he said, focused on improving police
officers' abilities in handling riots or demonstrations.

"They are giving assistance on the transfer of knowledge to
our police personnel on how to handle mass demonstrations.

The police's education curriculum mainly concerns how to
handle the masses while observing human rights," he said.

Nurfaizi said that the assistance from the U.S. had nothing to
do with the People's Consultative Assembly's General Session in
August.

"We conducted the training (on our own) several months ago,"
he said.

Criminologist Adrianus Meliala backed up Nurfaizi's claim.

"With assistance from several countries, the city police have
conducted training programs since last year," said Adrianus, one
of the tutors in the training programs.

Many countries, which have view the military with skepticism,
offered assistance to the Indonesian Police after the latter
separated recently from the Indonesian Military (TNI), he said.
(asa)