The police can never be separated from the people, says IGP

Admitting to this, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar however stressed that the police have never-- and can never be-- separated from the people.

“Eventhough we are the police, we are also part of the community. Our existence is synonymous with society. Wherever there is civilisation, there is police,” Khalid said in an interview with Astro AWANI recently.

“Maybe it was the public perception that has changed this good relationship that the police had with the society.”

Khalid said that allegations that the police are acted “rough”, are “biased” and “did not provide good service” are repeated many times and this has led to negative perception of the force.

“So much so that these has caused a perception among the people that see us as growing further and further apart... but that’s not true,” he said.

“In fact, we can never be separated from society.”

However, when asked, he conceded that bad perceptions do stem from real situations.

“The only way to change these perceptions is to be faster when we are slow, to be seen when we are not seen. We need to be together with the people in all kinds of public gatherings. If a case was not reported back to the complainant, we need to respond, regardless of the type of complaint.”

Khalid said that one of the vital expects in reforming the police force was to increase trainings and re-trainings, especially on communication skills.

“Actually we are in the process of giving retraining to the older personnel, and giving more exposure and training to the newer recruits on the right kind of communication methods,” he said.

Khalid said that this was an important aspect that was not giving priority in the past, but this must now be addressed.

“A lot of the older generation of police, we were not given specialised communication training. In my time, we must be forceful, or rather we were trained to be forceful, as we were trained during the communist insurgency...”

Khalid said that such trainings, will first involve those who meet the public often-- such as front line officers and beat police-- and later on also include investigators and administrators.

On upgrading investigative skills, Khalid admitted that there have been complaints and the police are working on ways to improve.

“It is true that there are complaints, on lateness and even quality of the investigation itself. So we look at these issues. We can’t transform overnight, we need to look for the root cause and get experts to advise us and train us,” he said.

“In that direction, we are discussing with universities locally and abroad so that courses on policing can be recognised,” he said.

Khalid explained that he hoped that constables can be recognised as diploma holders and inspectors can be put in the category of advanced diploma.

He also said that in order to have greater police presence despite limitations with number of personnel, the police would need to use creative methods, which also includes making use of the latest technologies.

“We can’t just depend on recruiting more people, we also need to look at the technologies that can help us with policing.”

On the issue of mobile police beat bases, Khalid said that they should, as its name implied, be ‘mobile’.