Police force faces new challenges

Police force faces new challenges

Today the Indonesian police force is celebrating its 49th
anniversary. Satjipto Rahardjo looks at the present challenges
facing the force.

SEMARANG (JP): The Indonesian police force, or POLRI, came
into being amid the fight for independence. Today, half a century
later, the Indonesian police have to confront a much different
situation and many new challenges.

In 1946, the police force and their countrymen fought hand in
hand against the colonial power. Today they are facing the
challenge of how to perform their duties professionally.

It is not easy to transform the culture of policing in a
colonial administration into the policing of an independent
Indonesia. I still see traces of colonial policing today.

Police who have to question the legitimacy of people talking
in public is but that kind of colonial trait.

The police are not highly esteemed in our society. I think
people still consider the administration of peace and order in a
society as something that can be taken for granted, not a serious
undertaking. It is not uncommon for people to avoid having to do
with the police as much as possible. Doing business with the
police is considered unpleasant and is likely to create more of a
problem than a solution.

Of course that kind of situation is detrimental to the
business of the police, who have to work closely with the people.
Without the understanding and support of the people, police can
not perform well. We are talking about image building, which
means that the police force has to be able to cast itself in such
a way that people will trust them.

Back to the question of keeping peace and order, it is now
becoming more evident that this cannot be taken for granted. We
do not have to wait until it is not safe to walk on the streets
to appreciate the importance of police tasks.

A society wanting to live in peace and order has to pay for
it. The people should be willing to pay their police to have the
quality of order they want. A glimpse of how nations spend their
money on police is shown in Table 1.

The table compares the basic monthly salary of a new police
recruit to the top cop, and to a bank clerk. The figures
dramatize the problem of how much society is willing to pay those
who engaged in dangerous jobs and those who are doing ordinary
office work.

TABLE 1 (in US$)

Country Recruit Chief Clerk

INDONESIA 63 930 233
MALAYSIA 156 1,465 597
SINGAPORE 513 9,682 510
THAILAND 147 1,703 253
HONG KONG 1,323 16,901 724
PHILIPPINES 36 471 275

(Source: Asiaweek, April 20, 1994)

Another comparison shows the shortage of police personnel in
Indonesia. The common international standard for people per
police is about one in four hundred. The figures of people per
police officer are shown in Table 2.

TABLE 2

Indonesia 1 : 1,100
Thailand 1 : 228
Malaysia 1 : 249
Philippines 1 : 665
Singapore 1 : 295
Hong Kong 1 : 220

The above figures show how the Indonesian police force has to
work harder than its colleagues in neighboring countries.

Everywhere in the world the police are a paramilitary force.
While the police in Indonesia belong to ABRI (the Armed Forces),
they are not a combatant. In Act 20/1982 on defense and order,
the police are given the autonomy of an agency of the criminal
justice system, by which its main job is to keep order and to
enforce the law. This is a rather complex situation, and so I
always like to characterize the police, especially in Indonesia,
as "a civilian in uniform". It is important to distinguish the
difference in doctrines between a military and police nature, as
the one is to destroy while the other is to protect and to care.

The police force has to accommodate any changes happening in
society that make the police officer's life more complicated. The
emergence of environmental problems puts weight on them to
develop new skills (such as forensic tactics). But as far as I
know there are still no special branches here like the
environmental police forces in some other countries.

Mastery of modern technology and coping with political
development are two important issues confronting our police force
at the moment. As Indonesia moves towards a civil society, in
which the rights of the people gain more importance, policing
will undoubtedly get more complicated.

The writer is a sociology of law professor at Diponegoro
University, Semarang, and a member of the National Commission on
Human Rights.