The nation stood in nervous shock on May 17 when an armed man managed to gain entry into the sparsely manned Ulu Tiram police station in Johor, killing two policemen and injuring another. The 21-year-old attacker was shot dead.
On Wednesday, a week shy of two months since the fatal attack on the police station, Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail told Parliament that police stations in the country would close their gates at 10 pm. Nervous shock returned as people began wondering how they were going to reach the police should an emergency happen after 10 pm.
As can be gleaned from media reports, many felt that such a move would frustrate the public when it should facilitate them. Clarifications by the ministry and the police followed, both explaining that police reports can still be made despite the gate closure.
If the Malaysian public's reaction began as nervous shock, it quickly turned into confusion, even with the clarifications. Some took to ridicule, hiding behind the slander-ridden anonymity of social media. We will leave the slimy world to the nattering nasties of negativism, but with a reminder: the country's problems never get solved this way.
The home ministry and police have got the issue right, but it is the solution that has gone amiss. The issue is this: how best to ensure police safety while not compromising on public safety. Closing the gates at 10 pm or at any time will never help deliver on both.
Policing is a 24/7, 365-day job that seeks to ensure public safety while safeguarding the lives and limbs of the police. Delivering on one but not the other isn't the purpose of policing. So isn't the delivery of some of this and some of that. While it is true that the police must be safe to make the public safe, talking about balancing one against the other isn't exactly right. Perhaps this is why the Home Ministry went the way of gate closure.
For 217 years, the police have kept their gates open in the face of ideologues of one type or another. Today, they are named terrorists, posing as they do their brand of policing challenges. Alert, armed, and with the right training, the police can keep their gates open while ensuring police and public safety.
It appears that the Home Ministry used the Ulu Tiram police station tragedy as a basis to push for the police gates to be closed after 10 pm. It may have missed a distinguishing feature there that other not-so-remote police stations have: Ulu Tiram police station didn't have any sentry. Remote places need no sentries, which is the wrong conclusion to arrive at. It is in remote areas that police presence is needed more.
Given that sentries come recommended with a long policing history, the directive should have been for all stations to have sentries, not the closure of police gates. Sentries, being the first point of alert, ensure police safety by controlling entrance into police stations. Sentries have helped keep the gates of police stations open 24/7 for more than two centuries. There isn't a reason why they can't continue to do so.