Bali’s Police: The nastiest and dumbest in the world?

Bali’s Police: The nastiest and dumbest in the world?
By Bali BS News
Oct 30, 2005, 08:48

In recent articles we have listed the various methods corrupt police officers in Bali extort money from victims and collude with their equally bent pet prosecutors and judges to put innocent people in jail, because they can not or will not pay. We have reported how the police allow terrorists to come into and operate in Bali with relative impunity by token of the fact police officers on anti-terrorism duty take bribes to forgo checks. We have reported how thousands of people have their civil and even human rights abused, including being murdered, at the hands of vigilante groups appointed by the police to do their job for them in villages, no doubt because they have “better” things to do; extorting money from people for example. Even when Bali’s police do something against crime itself, it seems they only do this when media coverage or International attention dictates; and often then only when International police forces send their own officers to do the Indonesian’s job for them.

But it is not just how Bali’s police are so dangerously crooked and inept; it is also how stupid they are. Some people, for example Australian radio presenters, have recently been chastised for calling the Indonesians “monkeys” over the Schapelle Corby trial. We know for a fact this is not just nasty but also it is not true; we truly believe people are people, and this has been scientifically proven. But it seems many Balinese police officers do deserve the descriptive or comparative label of being “monkeys” as well as the world’s most corrupt “mafia police”, due to their pathetic acts and seeming petulance to grin while shouting all the time they are doing something badly or something they should not be. Much like the noisy inhabitants of the Monkey Forest who try to grab items out of passer-by’s pockets. One minute just sitting or standing there, the next minute screeching and trying to rob their victims; can you differentiate whether we are talking about the monkeys or Bali police now? So let us take a look at a list of police acts we are aware of that show just how dumb and perhaps monkey like some, most or even all of Bali’s police are;

1) The set piece used by traffic duty police. Corrupt police officers on traffic duty stop foreign tourists on bikes or in cars to extort money from them, even when they have done nothing wrong. But the police only know one or two lines, just listen. Quite possibly they do not speak English and have only learned a couple of set piece sentences to extort money out of tourists. For example, how many people have been stopped for allegedly overtaking a vehicle when they have not been? Where the police officer only knows how to say you must indicate when you overtake and illustrates this by showing you how to use the indicators in your car or on your bike. When there was not another vehicle in sight and you point this fact out, what does the corrupt Bali policeman do? Why he repeats his words and actions of course. He only uses “this is what you have done wrong” (when you have not), “this is how much I need from you if you do not want to go to court”. Even when on road block duty, how many foreigners have been told their paperwork is not in order? Even those that insist they are are still asked for money, often as a "donation for a friend"! We wonder if there really is a friend and if there is if he is Bali's police chief, Made Pastika! And of course this is conducted nearly all the time with the officer having one hand on his revolver!

2) “Good” old officer Tri Kuncoro; the policeman in charge of Bali’s so called Cyber Crime department who is being supposedly investigated by the Indonesian Corruption Commission (don’t hold your breath, see our report: Indonesian Corruption Commission) and the one who colludes with Jack Daniels (see our report; Bali Discovery Tours Sanur); we have heard speculative rumors Officer Kuncoro made more bribe / collusion money from Jack Daniels in 2005 than he did in wages!

The problem, apart from the fact Kuncoro is a nasty corrupt police officer, is that Bali’s Internet detectives have no idea of what the Internet is or even how to use, and therefore abuse it. Recent examples of how stupid Tri Kuncoro and his friends in brown are include going to a business to see their web site pages, because they did not know you can see web pages on any Internet connected PC! Also he has shown he does not know how to determine the legal owner of a domain name, a simple Internet search feature anyone can perform. Tri Kuncoro’s so called Cyber Crime department is so ridiculous it does not even have an Internet PC or email address! Go to it boys! Of course, Bali’s police chief Made Pastika must also get some “credit” for all of this; after all, he set the department up! Sorry Made, maybe you were busy helping traffic duty cops with English lessons at the time!

3) Bali’s drugs investigation unit. Imagine this; a young Australian woman is stopped by customs officers at Bali’s International Airport with a bag full of a substance believed to be marijuana drugs. Bali’s drugs investigation police team are called. Watch any western television crime scene program and what happens? Nothing is touched, certainly nothing by hand, until the evidence and scene has been properly and carefully documented and photographed. Then, and only then, the police officers use plastic gloves and tongs pick up the evidence and place it carefully into special bags to protect any fingerprint and other evidence. The bag’s contents then get analyzed under laboratory conditions; finger prints are taken and the lab technician officers' document this and certify the bag contents have not been in any way compromised. You see this in every detective tv series and crime movie out of Hollywood since the 70’s right? Even your 8 year old son knows this right?

Bearing in mind Indonesia can and does hand down the death penalty for drugs smuggling, you would have thought Made Pastika could have least bought a counterfeit copy of some detective movie from a local stall-holder for US$1 to help train his officers right? It seems wrong! What did Made Pastika’s all important, life holding drugs detectives do? Why, they got the young Australian lady locked up and then proceeded to hand the packets of drugs around the office, so they could each take a look at thousands of dollars worth of weed! Perfect! Of course any real court would have ruled that the evidence was compromised because there was no proof the Australian girl had touched the packets, that maybe fingerprints which otherwise could have been taken and might have shown someone else was responsible; for example that the police themselves could have even planted the drugs! After all, it is a well recorded fact that police officers in Bali do work with drug dealers. Can you imagine such an investigation even making the courts in a country with a proper judicial system? We can not, but it happened and went all the way in Bali. Dumb police officers who should have known better from the age of 8, playing “catch me” with the evidence back at the station, going on to jailing an Australian girl based on compromised evidence.

If it were not for the fact these police officers are actually meant to be there in order to uphold the law, it would be funny; like recounted tales of how the tree swinging residents of Monkey Forest rob their victims. But this goes way beyond stupidity, it is an insult to everyone in Indonesia that the government continues to allow and even appoint such monkeys as police officers.