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Websites help police connect with residents
Stay tuned: Kelapa Gading police subprecinct keeps in contact with residents with its website, including traffic info and crime cases
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span class="inline inline-right">Stay tuned: Kelapa Gading police subprecinct keeps in contact with residents with its website, including traffic info and crime cases. polsekgading.com
Bassist Ridwan Aritomo, a member of Bandung-based rock band Polyester Embassy, recalled how the members of the band were recently upset after an event organizer from North Jakarta failed to pay them.
“In August, the event organizer invited us to perform at a music festival at a mall in Kelapa Gading [North Jakarta],” Ridwan, 28, told The Jakarta Post recently.
“Prior to our performance, they paid us half of our fee and promised to transfer the rest later.
“We waited for several days but they never sent the money.”
The band said they had no other choice but to report the case to the police.
Ridwan, the only band member who works and lives in Jakarta, was appointed to settle the case.
A lawyer by day, Ridwan said he actually had no time to immediately visit the Kelapa Gading Police Station and report the case until he unexpectedly discovered the police precinct had a website where he could file an online report.
“I wrote on the website’s ‘contact-us’ page about my case and asked the police whether they could handle it or not,” he said.
“Three days later, the police precinct chief himself replied to my message and asked me to write down the details of the case.”
Although the members of the band had finally decided to drop the case, Ridwan said he really appreciated the police precinct for providing the online service.
“It only took a few minutes to type and submit the report,” he said.
According to the Jakarta Police, there were a total of 55,483 cases of crime reported in Greater Jakarta during 2009, meaning that at least one crime occurred every 9 minutes and 47 seconds.
However, the number of the cases in 2009 was 10 percent lower than the 61,682 cases from the previous year.
Although it is almost certain the actual number of crime cases in Jakarta is higher than the official figures released by the police as many people fail to report as they may be inconvenienced by going to a police station or be unsure of the exact procedure.
To help the public overcome such psychological barriers, several police offices in Jakarta have taken the initiative to introduce interactive websites that allow residents to report or inform the police about any crime cases in their area.
According to the Post’s research, police offices that already have their own websites include the South Jakarta Police, West Jakarta Police, Central Jakarta Police and Kelapa Gading Police precinct.
City police spokesman Sr. Comr. Boy Rafli Amar said such online services would encourage the public to help the police run their surveillance duties.
He also said the Jakarta Police had created the website reskrimum.metro.polri.go.id for residents who wanted to report crime cases, but needed to keep their identity confidential.
Boy, however, admitted the Jakarta Police currently had no special budget to support police offices in the municipal and precinct levels to develop their online services.
“All of them run their website independently,” he said. “That’s why, each website has a different quality.”
With no financial support from the Jakarta Police, police officers have different ways of maintaining their websites.
Head of West Jakarta Police’s operation unit Adj. Sr. Comr. Johanson Ronald Simamora, said he had hired a professional administrator last year to manage the polresjakbar.org website as no officers were familiar with handling the IT system.
“The site was actually launched in 2008, but we could not fully operate it so several months later we employed someone to manage it,” Johanson said.
However, he refused to mention how much money the West Jakarta Police had spent on establishing and maintaining the website, the most of which is dedicated to posts of daily crime news.
Kelapa Gading Police precinct chief Comr. M. Liberty Panjaitan has a different approach.
To ensure the sustainability of its online public service, Liberty said he “forced” his officers to spend time learning computer programming, graphic design and maintaining the entire IT system at the police station.
“It is important to make our officers familiar with the IT system and website administration,” he said.
