The recent three violent crimes committed in broad daylight in Kuching and four gruesome murders in Sibu have raised alarm among the general public of whether security in major towns in Sarawak is still intact.
The two high profile cases of a white-collared woman’s hand being chopped off in a public place and the case of an open shooting at high end residential area of Green Height, which remain unsolved, are still in the minds of the general public.
Long regarded as punching bag whenever there is a high profile crime, the Sarawak Police Commissioner Datuk Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani who is in office for only seven months, tells his side of the story to a senior reporter of The Borneo Post, Lian Cheng.
Sarawak is still overall a very safe place — Police chief
Acryl Sani
Q: How do you describe the crime situation in Sarawak in general?
Sarawak’s population is about 2.5 million and the land size is as big as the peninsular. Kuching only has a population of about 700,000; Sibu, 260,000; Miri, 300,000 and Bintulu 220,000, compared to some big towns which have an average population of 3 million. Here, we can almost say that everyone knows everyone.
Crime is categorised into two groups i.e. violent and property crime. In Sarawak, for the half year period of Jan-Jun 2012, a total of 5,092 criminal cases were reported. The types of crimes here are predominantly property crime which constitutes 90 per cent (or 4,584 cases) of the total crimes reported. Theft (63 per cent) and break-in (27 per cent) cases constitute the majority of cases which we need to address. As for serious crime, which makes up 10 per cent or 508 cases, the highest was recorded in Kuching (193 cases) followed by Miri (63 cases), Sibu (60 cases), Bintulu (47 cases) and the remaining 145 cases occurring in the other 23 districts throughout the state.
I am not trying to down play, but honestly I would say that overall Sarawak is still a very safe place.
Q: It has been reported in the media that the crime rate is dropping. However, there seems to be an increase in violent crimes. Please comment.
Violent crimes comprise of murder, rape, robbery (with or without arms) which causes grievous hurt. From our statistics, for the period of Jan – June 2012 as compared to the same period last year, murder cases has increased by three cases or 18.7per cent from 16 cases last year to 19 cases this year.
Rape cases have increased by 18 cases or 26.4per cent i.e. from 68 to 86 cases reported this year. Still the overall
statistics show an overall violent crime drop of 7.64 per cent since there is a drop on the other category of violent crimes where robbery cases was down from 207 cases last year to 145 cases this year and causing grievous hurt down from 259 cases to 258 cases. Correspondingly, it is also interesting to note that there has been a drop of street crimes (snatch theft and all type of robbery without arms) by 51.85 per cent.
Statistics do not lie and we can’t manufacture false statistics. When a case is reported, there is an entry in the on-line police reporting system. No one can delete or manipulate that entry.
From Jan to June this year, there are three noted cases of violence in Kuching i.e. one murder and two cases of causing grievous hurt. As for Sibu there are four murder cases which were given wide coverage by the media.
Q: Two or three violence cases may be considered okay for you, but for us we consider that ‘many’ and the public perception is that our security is no longer intact.
Then perhaps, from now on, I should refrain myself from referring to statistics as even when we tell you there is a drop, the public still don’t feel safe.
For me, this is all about individual’s perception and expectation since every time there is a case that attracts public interest is reported, people start talking that the crime rate has increased. And when data shows on the contrary, they say “we don’t feel safe anymore”.
So, when we talk about number of cases, how many is “many”? What is the number to be accepted the standard of safety? Is it zero case? one case? or two cases?
When people said “many”, you are quantifying into numbers. When you talk about the Green Height Coffee shop shooting, it is one such case this year. And how many such cases last year? or the year before?
As far as I know, this is the only shooting case in Kuching. The last one happened more than 10 years ago. As this kind of case seldom happened, of course people were shocked by it. But certainly we shouldn’t be too excited to claim that we no longer feel safe.
And when we talk about this lady’s hand been chopped off, we have to look at her background. She is just a regular person like us. Perhaps, it was due to some reason that we are still investigating, someone finally decided to act against her. Does that reflect a crime situation that is on the rise? We must talk about practicality and reality.
The same thing seems to apply in the case where a man who was attacked by three masked persons in broad daylight when he was taking breakfast in one coffee shop at 11am. From the style of attack in both cases, some said it involved gangsterism. But based on the investigation so far we still could not see that there are elements of gangsterism involved.
Q: Is the state of security in Sarawak at present acceptable?
As I have said earlier, the overall situation is still very safe. We can still see people going out for dinner, cycling at night and doing many other activities. And if we look at the faces of people, we don’t see them showing any signs of worries, stress or jittery of becoming the next victim of crime.
Of course we all hope for an ideal situation. Everybody wants and dreams a crime free society. Like Martin Luther King once said “I have a dream…..”.
But is ours an ideal society? Recently, I read in one of the leading newspaper carrying story about the Ugly Malaysians. The story relates how our society exhibit all behaviours uncalled for in a cultured society. And we still have issues on how best to instil good mannerism in our students in schools (whether to rotan or not to rotan).
As much as I do not want to refer too much on statistics, still index crime for the period of January to June 2012 has dropped by 11.67per cent i.e. from a total 5,765 cases last year to 5,092 cases this year. Sarawak is generally a very safe place to stay.
Even though statistics have showed that security has improved, people still don’t feel secure. As I said earlier, it is a matter of perception.
Q: Why is perception unfavourable to the police?
Because the public keeps on focusing on crimes. And when they talk about crime, they always relate either to their own experience or their friends’ or even their friends’ friends’ experience. But yet in reality, you don’t see people running around on the street crying for help because they have been chased after.
Q: Perhaps people feel unsafe because most cases are not solved and the public has this perception that the police are ineffective.
That is why we no longer use this term “solving rate”.
“Solving rate” means the rate of cases deemed to have been solved after identifying the suspects. For example, when we manage to find a stolen vehicle or identify a suspect, we consider case as solved even when the criminals or suspects are still not apprehended.
Nowadays, people see it as a very loose definition, which we have been using as the main reference to measure our achievements in managing criminal investigations.
But now, we have changed to use the term “charging rate” which is more challenging to achieve.
This year, our KPI is to achieve 25 per cent charging rate, meaning for every 10 cases investigated by the police, 2.5 cases must go to the court to be charged. It makes us work harder. Next year, it will be 35 per cent.
Up to end of June, we have achieved 23.4 per cent of charging rate.
Q: Let us zoom in to Sibu. There have been many violent crimes in Sibu. Are these crimes related to gangsterism?
Statistically in Sarawak, Sibu ranked third in term of number violent crimes reported after Kuching and Miri. Yes we can see for this year, from January to June, there are four murder cases and two out of the four cases have been charged in court. The two murder cases that have gone to the court were confirmed to have nothing to do with gangsterism.
The other two cases have yet to be solved. The case of the murder of a banker in his house is suspected to be a break-in case gone foul. But we are still investigating all possibilities.
The other unsolved case is the gunning down of a businessman from the back. The case is still under investigation.
We understand that Sibu is a town with a relatively small population. The residents find it hard to accept when these things happened, but we assure the people that it has nothing to do with gangsterism.
Q. What is the percentage of crimes committed in the state are gangster-related? Is gangster-related crime on the rise in Sarawak?
Any criminals when committing any crime of violence will definitely exhibit gangster-like behaviour, but then this kind of phenomena happens everywhere, not just in Sarawak or Sibu for that matter.
In fact, for Sarawak, gangster related cases amounted to only 0.002 per cent against the total number of crimes committed each year.
There has been no solid evidence of gangster-related crimes being on the rise in Sarawak.
Q: What have been the steps taken to curb gangsterism in the state?
There are a few steps we have been taking which include profiling of every potential criminals, charging them in court should they been found to be committing crimes.
We also check on them from time to time to let them know that they are being watched. And for the so-called active gang members, detectives have been assigned to monitor their movements and activities for any potential gangster-related activities.
Q: Are the two cases of Green Height coffee shop shooting and the chopping off of the right hand of a woman gangster-related?
As I have said earlier our investigation so far has not revealed any elements of gangsterism. We are still looking at several theories and at this point of time indications seemed to suggest at personal grudge.
Q: Anyone from the public comes forth with information with regards to the shooting since it has been estimated that there were about 100 customers witnessing the scene then?
We have interviewed all of those who were there that day. Investigation is still on-going and we appeal to members of public who has any information to come up and help the police.
Q: How do you feel towards the negative perception the public have for the police – being inefficient and unable to solve cases, especially the high profile ones?
Yes, it is bad for us that just when we announced that crime rate was down, suddenly a person got her hand chopped off and of course with the way the media carried out the story will definitely convinced the people that the situation is critical.
Q: Thus far, are you happy with the performance of the police?
Yes I must say that I am quite happy, but of course there are still rooms for improvement. We have to continuously remind our personnel that we must be seen to do our work.
You see, the most important thing for us is to be seen by the public. We are expected to be seen on the road, patrolling the streets. People want to see us in our uniform, doing our rounds. And we need to do all these things 24hrs and seven days a week. They do not expect us to go to their backyard to snoop around. The mere police presence makes people feel comfortable. And I would say that criminals or perpetrators would think twice before they commit any wrong doings when we are around.
Q: Despite constant police presence, there are still open shootings. Do you think the criminals are challenging the police?
I don’t see it as the criminals challenging the police. I don’t think any criminals dare to challenge us. They just wait for their chances.
They know that the police cannot be everywhere 24 hours seven days a week. The police have other places to take care of.
We cannot put police officers at all areas every time all the time.
Crime happens when the three basic elements are present i.e. intention, target and opportunity.
They wait for their opportunity when they have already a fixed target and intention. Minus any one of these and crime will not happen.
Q: What guns have the criminals been using and where are they from?
In all the shooting cases, we found out that shotguns and the likes are mostly used. Here in Sarawak shotguns and homemade guns are common for hunting.
The criminals do not use very sophisticated weaponry such as automatic pistols or high velocity rifles. If this has been the case, then there is a cause to worry.
We believe and from evidence gathered thus far the guns being used were either shotguns or homemade guns.