No more weapons for Jakarta Public Order Agency

The Jakarta Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) has adopted a milder way of upholding public order: persuasion instead of brute forces.

"As you can see, now we only wear uniforms without carrying knives and batons," the agency's chief, Effendi Anas, told reporters at the City Hall on Tuesday as quoted by kompas.com

. "All of the weapons have gone."

He said that Satpol PP had adopted the softly-softly approach since the beginning of the tenure of Governor Joko "Jokowi" Widodo earlier in October.

"This is a part of his strategy to take a more humane approach to discipline [the public] and establish a new image for the agency," Effendi said.

When Jokowi served as a mayor of Surakarta, Central Java, he also banned the use of batons and shields in the Surakarta Public Order Agency.

To further remove the violent image of Surakarta’s agency, Jokowi appointed a female as the chief of the Surakarta Satpol PP. (han/swd)