Singapore Police Brutality

We were house hunting for the company's branch office in Manila, when the Chinese Filipino agent told us to contact the condominium security in event of need for assistance - never, never call the police. Years ago, a friend of his who was kidnapped and released after the ransom was paid went to make a report. Imagine the horror when he saw one of his kidnappers in uniform at the station. Since then, the trust in the authorities had never been the same.

When Iskandar Bin Rahmat, a senior staff sergeant attached to Bedok Police Division, was charged with the brutal murders of Tan Boon Sin and his son Tan Chee Heong at their Hillside Drive home, then Police Commissioner Ng Joo Hee had said: "The public’s trust in the Police is the only reason why we are able to keep Singapore as safe as it is. This trust is hard-earned and must never be broken."

Iskandar was the police officer attending to elder victim Tan Boon Sin when latter had earlier made a police report in November 2012 over the theft of a safety deposit box at  CISCO.

Businessman Mr Lim was visibly shaken in his faith in the law when a gang of about 8 plainclothes police officers gatecrashed his drinking session with a group of friends at a nightclub in Hotel Rendzeous. He has the evidence of the roughhousing to prove it too: a broken nose that requires follow up treatment in a hospital for plastic surgery. The physical abuse stopped only when someone shouted, “bleeding already!” Unfortunately Dinesh Rahman did not have third party intervention, else he would be still alive today to bear witness of police brutality.

Lee Hsien Loong just happened to be boasting about our "tech-savvy" police when he wrote "No more 'I say/you say' dispute over what happened". He was referring to the new body cameras for front-line police officers he saw at the opening of the Police Operations Command Centre (POCC).

Obviously the thugs that took down an innocent Singaporean was not equipped with the all seeing device. Heck, they even flipped their identity tags over so they can hide in plain sight. And what did they say of the incident? - "disorderly behavior by speaking loud in the general public and assault on police officer for tugging at the lanyard of the officer". Does that mean that, in addition to the ubiquitous breath analyser test, we will all soon have to pass a decibel meter check?