Safety in the urban jungle

No matter how modern and luminous a large urban center like Jakarta becomes, there is no guarantee the public can achieve a safe and secure environment. If years ago, the citizens of the capital felt obliged to secure their homes before they went out, now they must be mindful of their well being on the streets.

Young unemployed men have now joined the ubiquitous beggars at intersections. The difference being that these youths are not reluctant to resort to threats and force to extort rupiah from unwary passersby.

The public has become ever more fearful of the danger lurking at street corners. Even road signs placed by the traffic authorities at U-turns have been exploited by these desperate youths to impose their own rules in order to collect fees for unsolicited traffic direction services.

The police force, which has long complained about lack of personnel, seems powerless to protect the innocent passing through certain areas in this sprawling concrete jungle.

Due to the constraints, the police have become quite good at solving complicated criminal cases, but have yet to boost their prevention capabilities. And the much-boasted neighborhood security systems can offer no aid in improving the situation.

Now, once again, the public is shuddering at still another story of street criminality. Brig. Gen. T. M. F. Tampubolon, an expert staff member to the Armed Forces commander and a former member of the elite red-beret Kopassus squad, was brutally killed in a Jakarta street on Monday evening. He died an hour after he was accosted by knife-wielding men near an intersection in Cipinang Muara, East Jakarta.

The suspects in the killing are now off the streets. But what about the unemployed street thugs who congregate at other crossroads, perpetrating violent crimes against passersby with knives and sickles?

And it appears that nothing much can be done to keep such tragedies from recurring. This sense of pessimism originates not only from the constraints faced by the police force, but from the ugly reality of the city itself. Given Jakarta's burgeoning population, the high rate of urbanization, the density of its neighborhoods, the high unemployment rate, the relative poverty of many of its citizens, it is not surprising that crime, which has its roots in the above socio-economic conditions, has become a persistent problem here.

This disease threatening our society afflicts us not only because the rate of employment has fallen short of the demands for jobs due to the high population growth, but because of the drastic gap between the number of the privileged few and the hordes of the poverty stricken. It is an ironic tragedy that while the majority of people still face the problem of how to make the end meets, Jakarta has become home to a society in which the excessively wealthy freely flaunt their affluence. This materialistic way of life goads our unemployed young people to find the shortest way possible to better living conditions.

Every day we hear of robberies, car thefts, the mugging of school children, homicides and rapes occurring in our streets, with the occasional drug abuse scandal among the more privileged members of society coming to light as well.

It is no wonder that the public is becoming increasingly cynical about any resolution of the criminality dilemma. And with recent reports of police brutality, the public's frustration with the law enforcement process borders on a total lack of respect for all law enforcers.