To better protect and to serve

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Mon, 07/02/2007 10:36 AM | Opinion

Most people here are familiar with the motto of the National Police: ""to protect and to serve"". Unfortunately, they most likely know the motto from American TV cop shows, not from being protected or served by our Indonesian police.

In an announcement on the commemoration of the National Police's anniversary, which fell on July 1, National Police chief Gen. Sutanto still saw the need to appeal for the prayers of the people to help the police ""better protect and serve"" citizens.

For our own sake we will definitely be praying hard for a much more professional police force -- so we can go about our daily lives, confident our families, our homes and ourselves will be safe.

This hope is why the country formally separated the police from the military, to create a much more caring and skillful police force. Since this separation, people have had much higher expectations.

The top brass will know they have succeeded in meeting these expectations when people stop telling that old joke about the police: if you go to the police for help finding your stolen chicken, you'll end up losing your goat as well.

A classic defense of the police is that they are severely understaffed to be able to cater to a population of more than 230 million, living in crowded cities and remote islands.

As officers and observers have stressed, there's an urgent need to allocate more resources for additional personnel, raises for officers, more training and updated equipment, which in turn would help attract more of the best and the brightest high school graduates.

At the same time people are impatient or even ignorant of the promises of the newly reborn police force in the ""reformasi"" era -- for they're disgusted every time they're approached for the subtle or not so subtle request for a bribe, a remaining habit of the armed thug in uniform.

Now that the police are no longer part of the military, which itself is striving to become more professional, we all have an opportunity to benefit.

Offers of police training assistance from foreign countries is a positive signal that our police have gained new recognition in their own right.

They have gained an unexpected boost through their hard work tracking and arresting terrorist suspects, even as we cursed them with every new explosion, and even as deep skepticism persists, with many still believing our officers are mere pawns in an international conspiracy against Islamic groups.

The rest of us prefer to support any sign of progress in our security forces' ability to check the spread of violence.

The National Police are also one of the main instruments in the anti-corruption drive, and here they can not be blamed for failing to meet hopes to put an end to the high-level abuse and theft of state resources.

Political interests still come into play when an associate of a powerful person, or influential parties themselves, are targeted for investigation, and it is here that the impartiality of the police -- and other parties -- is tested.

Was it really the incompetence of the police, for instance, which caused their case files to be returned at least eight times by the Attorney General's Office in the case against the president director of state power firm PLN, Eddie Widiono?

As with other mysteries here, one can speculate forever -- with no solution in sight. With several major corruption cases remaining unresolved, among them that of the Bank Indonesia liquidity support funds, stuck as they are between the police and the Attorney General's Office, a number of parties have called for the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to take over the investigations so they can move forward.

The commission has stated its readiness to take on the cases -- but it is not yet clear to us when, and under what parameters the KPK could do so.

Consultants have suggested the need to study the lessons from the now dissolved Corruption Eradication Coordination Team -- which won praise for recovering Rp 3.95 trillion in state assets under the leadership of Hendarman Supandji, now the attorney general.

Timtas Tipikor, as the coordination team was called, apparently had sufficient cooperation between the Attorney General's Office, the State Auditor and Development Comptroller and the police -- which should show that the National Police, may not be the handicap they are often viewed as.

With the National Police having marked another anniversary, we reiterate our support for whatever steps are necessary to improve its professionalism and to regain public trust. That will be the day when a person would not hesitate to ask the local police for help in finding his prized rooster -- for he would surely get to keep his goat, instead of losing it to pay the men in brown.

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