Riau Islands Police plan to equip officers with small boats to enable them to patrol their archipelagic jurisdiction and keep up with the movements of smugglers and illegal immigrants.
Riau Islands Police chief Brig. Gen. Pudji Hartanto recently told a press conference in his office in Nongsa, Batam, that the small boats, called pompong, would be of great use in patrolling the vast Riau Islands waters.
"Every year we ask the National Police headquarters for more patrol boats, but they only ever give us one or maybe two boats when we quite obviously need more; it*s just too expensive to provide us with more boats," he said.
He added that a patrol boat costs around Rp 150 million (US$16,000), while a pompong costs only around Rp 40 million to build.
The police are currently building one pompong for a regency police office as a pilot project.
Pudji said if the boat proved to be useful for the office's operations he would seek to equip all of its five regency offices and one city police station with a pompong.
"Currently we only have 19 boats, two of them have minor damage while one of them is severely damaged," he added.
Riau Islands Police patrol around 240,000 square kilometers of open water, which makes up 96 percent of the total Riau Islands territory. Nineteen of the province's 2,408 islands are located along the international borders, of Manlaysia and Singapore, meaning smuggling and illegal fishing are among the main crimes committed in the province.
The police have around 3,500 personnel, equating to 1 police officer per 444 people, a rate that meets international standards.
Pudji said that in the first half of 2008, his office had uncovered 1,871 criminal cases, 48 of which were classed as crimes that caused state losses, such as smuggling, illegal fishing and corruption.
The number of uncovered crimes rose in the first half of 2009 to 2,155, but only 25 cases caused state losses.
"The decrease in the number of crimes that cause state losses does not necessarily mean that the incidents have become less frequent; it might just mean that we have not succeeded in uncovering such crimes," he added.
In a bid to prevent more crimes, Pudji has come up with a scheme to empower local residents.
"We give life jackets for free to local residents who are in the business of island-to-island crossing; they often go with 20 people on board without a single life jacket when it is *the law* to provide their passengers with them," he said.
He added that the life jacket giveaway scheme was intended for people's safety. By giving out life jackets, Pudji hoped that people would in turn report incidents they encountered on the water and in their neighborhood to the police.
The scheme has achieved results.
"We already have people reporting crimes to us. The people who live near the coast have come to us to report smuggling attempts, and we also received a report from local residents about a recent ATM robbery that caused a loss of billions of rupiah," he said.
Riau Islands Police have so far given out 1,500 life jackets, while the Bintan regency police and the Barelang city police have handed out 650 and 500. Pudji said the price of life jackets ranged from Rp 90,000 to Rp 100,000 each.
As one of Indonesia's most far-flung areas, Riau Islands province faces endless problems of security threats from foreign smugglers and international crime syndicates, the police chief said.
International smuggling rings have used Indonesia as a final stopover due to its close proximity to Australia and weak monitoring of its 17,000 islands.
With an area roughly the size of western Europe, Indonesia only has 130 immigration checkpoints and 79 border posts to control the flow of people. The situation is exacerbated by poor surveillance by the underfunded Navy.
Riau Island is a favorite point of entry for immigrants arriving via Malaysia or Singapore. Once there, immigrants travel by bus or boat to Jakarta to apply for refugee status from the UNHCR office. (adh)
