Safety in the urban jungle

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.