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)