Crime Free City, Bored Police

Recently, we seemed to have a chain of ludicrous public incidents; from paying peanuts worth $600,000 a year to the CEO of a charity organization to having riot police to come in to stop 4 protestors outside the CPF building and finally the latest debacle of having the police stepping in to investigate the culprit behind the 8 white elephants outside Buangkok MRT station. (This MRT station has such an inauspicious name, "buang" and "cock", no wonder it seems destined to remain a ghost station)

After much public outcry and disgust at the police coming in to conduct a criminal investigation for what most people see as a form of artistic expression of dissatisfaction, the SPF recently came out to clarify that they have to investigate because some asshole (no, the police did not call the bugger "asshole", I did) called 999 and so they have to do their job and could not pick their cases. Interesting defense but not without loopholes. Notwithstanding the possibility that one of the people in the government made that 999 phone call which would then be a blatant case of the government asking the police to go hunt down the artist, it still leaves us wondering if the SPF is really serious about that as a justification. Because if so, we should make them show they mean business by calling 999 for every trivial violation of the law, like finding chewing gum stuck on the ground, people sticking tuition notices at the bus stop, football marks on the walls of void decks and made them investigate ALL these. When we start making calls like this, we better see the police scambling to solve all these cases by calling suspects for interview and bringing in the forensic experts.

Of course, by investigating every single case without some selectiveness, the SPF would then be showing a total lack of intelligence, in other words "no thinking policeman" (remember the "thinking soldier" advertisement?). I suppose if news of this spread to the police force of other countries which have their hands full handling battery, mugging, rape and murder, they would probably fall over and laugh. What to do? This is one of the disadvantage we have to live with for a relatively crime free city, a bored police force that derives cheap thrills from making a mountain out of an anthill.