Police ineffectual in war against crime
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The police are the main agents in society assigned to ensure security, right? However, in the event that they are powerless to crack down on widespread crime, the public must be prepared to defend itself.
Sooner or later, the public must prepare to protect itself, as the police unveiled on Wednesday that they were powerless to deal with the high number of crimes in the capital.
"Yes, we admit that we often fail to prevent crimes from taking place," city police spokesman Sr. Comr. Anton Bachrul Alam told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
Anton gave the excuse that the police's inability to maintain security in Jakarta was mainly due to their internal limitations, including the lack of manpower and funding.
Public concern about the capital's security is rife amid reports of an increase in street crimes and offenses that occur every day in the capital.
The feeling of insecurity has deteriorated following the Sunday bomb blasts and the discovery of two other explosives in different locations in Jakarta.
After three days of intensive investigation, the police acknowledged that they were still in the dark about the motives behind the bomb attack.
Many people criticize the police for their failure to secure the city and they doubt that the police would be able to arrest the culprits.
Evi Lestari, an employee of a private company, said she could not expect too much from the police.
"It seems like they are powerless against criminals here," she said.
An activist has attributed the failure to the police's poor intelligence.
Secretary-general of non-governmental organization Police Watch Adnan Panupraja said on Tuesday that the police should improve their intelligence alertness. He also suggested that the police intelligence should coordinate their efforts with the State Intelligence Agency (BIN), which has stronger, wider and more established connections than the police.
Meanwhile, criminologist at the University of Indonesia Adrianus Meliala said that the public should develop its own self-protection as a major proportion of public places was out of police reach or control.
"About 60 percent of public places are 'unpoliced'. It allows criminals to commit offenses without fear of detection or capture by law enforcement agencies," said Adrianus, who is also a consultant to the police.
Jakarta has a total of 21,000 police personnel spread across the whole of Jakarta and covering a population of more than 8.3 million. But many of the 21,000 police officers have to deal with administrative tasks. Ideally, the ratio of police to population should be one to 400.