Police covering up car theft bribery

Police covering up car theft bribery

Referring to your article in The Jakarta Post, on Dec. 14,
entitled Police say no charge to report stolen car; public begs
to differ, I am flabbergasted that the Police force, or its
spokesperson, Sr. Comr. Tjiptono (the Post, Dec. 13) said a day
earlier that the police never demanded bribes from autotheft
victims.

During the Idul Fitri holiday in 2003, our office car, an
Isuzu Panther Minivan worth around Rp 65 million with a Jakarta
license plate number was stolen in Sukabumi, West Java. The
process of obtaining the necessary documents to be able to
process the insurance claim, cost my company Rp 5.7 million and
took six weeks to arrange as the documents had to be processed in
Sukabumi, Bandung and Jakarta. The cost had been kept to a
minimum as many connections within the police bureaucracy were
made use of, but without these "friends", who knows what the cost
would have been.

Even the insurance companies/their agents are aware of these
charges and very often the claims adjuster for the insurance
company will provide mediation services between the insured and
the police to arrange for the necessary documents.

M. HUSSIEN, Jakarta