IGP: Justifying Incompetence

Tan Sri Musa Hassan has defended his officers criticised for alleged "sloppiness"

The inspector-general of police said investigations had been thorough and complete.

"As far as the police are concerned, investigations into the case were complete and thorough.

"However, problems arose when the witnesses, who were plantation workers, refused to co-operate by disappearing after the incident.

"We had done our level best to try and locate the witnesses but they were nowhere to be found. They were no longer at the plantation after the incident.

"If people do not want to co-operate, what can we do?"

So, what can the police do? They had done their best using their best, and if their best is incompetence and inexperience, what can they do? We must accept that they were grade 3 SPM holders who were ushered into the law faculty and rolled out by the university; they were manufactured by the system; they weren't enabled with adequate knowledge and lack effective training and guidance; they were put on the job; they did not have standard operating procedures; they were not trained to do documentation and investigation; they were on the job by virtue of their placement.

The judge had said Noorleyda had only done her job for the sake of "completing her task" (janji siap). But the judge must be informed that thats what she was employed to do; she didn't know that she had to do more than what she had done?

The judge had also said the role of an investigating officer should not be confined to only recording statements from witnesses, sending her men to take pictures or drawing a sketch of the scene.

"There should be standard operating procedures and it should be different from other cases such as rape and robbery," the judge had said, adding that guidelines should be given to new officers such as Noorleyda while the procedures should be updated.

IGP Musa replied that this only showed there is weaknesses in the police force and so, since it is weaknesses, they will improve on it...it is not incompetence, or inability, it is weaknesses, and that will be looked into.

diagnosing this weakness, Musa found that the cause wasn't their own weakness but it was due to the lack of co-operation from the public which was of paramount importance in police cases.

"They should co-operate and give full assistance to us to facilitate investigations."

So, you see, they never had weakness; the weakness was caused by the lack of public cooperation.

By the way, the same ideology must apply - it is not about winning court cases, it is about the spirit of participation and participants were taught to be such. They did just that. Have fun, son!