T

he National Police celebrates its 69th anniversary today. As an armed force, the National Police inherited a culture and a system from the Dutch colonial government. The force'€™s involvement in the country'€™s struggle for independence and the subsequent political turmoil, including changes in the national leadership in the 1960s and the 1990s, however, has shaped it into what it is today.

It was during those turbulent times that the National Police was placed under different supervising authorities. Initially under the supervision of the Home Ministry and the Attorney General'€™s Office, the force was brought under the auspices of the prime minister during the Sukarno presidency, with the police chief given Cabinet membership status. It was later on merged with the three military forces '€” the Army, the Navy and the Air Force '€” but its chiefs continued to sit in the Cabinet.

During the succeeding leadership of president Soeharto, the police and the three military forces were administered by the Defense Ministry until Soeharto'€™s downfall in 1998. The subsequent reformasi era has seen the police force emerge as an independent institution, separated from the Indonesian Military and directly answerable to the President.

Throughout its existence, the police force has always been associated with the political interests of the power holders. Those interests, combined with the lengthy chain of command and organizational preferences, plus the state'€™s inability to provide decent welfare for police personnel '€” often used as an excuse for corrupt practices '€” have allowed irregularities that have tainted the force'€™s image.

It is perhaps an exaggeration to conclude that corruption in the police force is systemic, as there are certainly still many good cops around. But cases of police officers arrested and convicted of various forms of corruption '€” many of them found to have sums of money in their bank accounts that did not match their respective ranks and positions '€” demonstrate that corruption is a serious internal problem that the police must address sooner rather than later.

Worse is the perception that the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is a threat rather than a partner for the police in the anticorruption campaign. We might remember the repeated standoffs between the National Police and KPK '€” popularly known as the Crocodile (police) vs Gecko (KPK) incident '€” following a KPK investigation into allegedly corrupt police officers.

The latest case in point is the multimillion dollar bribery scheme implicating Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan, now the deputy National Police chief. After a series of legal tugs-of-war between the two institutions, which saw a court declare the KPK investigation illegal, the case was eventually transferred to the National Police.

The police have since then stepped up measures to fight graft, but the Budi case shows that the force is not yet ready to tidy up its own organization. If the police are really committed to reform, they must let other authorities investigate corrupt officers. This achievement is what the police are still lacking amid their success in protecting the public.