City police need larger budget: House

House of Representatives legislators intend to urge the government to increase the operational budget of the Jakarta Police, reasoning that the police force handles not only many cases but also prominent ones.

“The Jakarta Police received a budget of a little more than Rp 1 trillion [US$109 million] this year. Compared to the amount of cases they have to tackle, which is more than 23,000, it’s not enough,” lawmaker Syarifudin Suding told reporters.

“We will propose a higher budget for the city police,” he said.

Syarifudin and 13 fellow legislators from Commission III on legal affairs visited city police headquarters on Tuesday as part of their monitoring of the capital’s law enforcement facilities.

They met with city police chief Insp. Gen. Untung S. Rajab, deputy chief Brig. Gen. Suhardi Alius,
police spokesman Sr. Comr. Baharuddin Djafar and other senior police officers.

Untung said that, apart from budget constraints, the quality and quantity of personnel were also discussed during the meeting with the lawmakers.

“We also discussed improvements to security efforts ahead of the year-end holiday, as well as recent crimes in the city and the most recent updates on investigations,” he said.

Meanwhile, lawmaker Benny Kabur Harman said that he had noticed problems in the police’s detention center during the visit.

“While the place itself is visibly well managed, clean and tidy, it is far too crowded,” he said.

He went on to say that many of the detainees were convicted felons who could not be sent to prison because they (the prison) were all full.

“This is just wrong. At this point, they shouldn’t be the police’s responsibility. We will discuss this with the Supreme Court, the National Police chief and the Law and Human Rights Ministry to find a solution,” Benny said.

He said his commission would propose a budget increase of between 20 and 30 percent for the police.

“Everybody always complains about small budgets. However, people have to realize that the government has a limited amount of money. We will do what we can to solve this problem,” he said.

“Simply put, we just don’t want the city’s criminals to have cars that can outrun police cruisers,” he added. (mim)