KUALA LUMPUR : External agencies meant to safeguard against police misconduct are hobbled by inadequate resources and co-operation, an international rights’ advocacy group said today.

In a report on police abuses officially released today, the Human Rights’ Watch (HRW) said the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) and the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC) tasked by Putrajaya monitor police abuses, were failing to do so.

“Police cooperation with existing external review mechanisms, moreover, has generally been poor, and this lack of effective cooperation has helped render the current mechanisms ineffective in addressing the problems of police abuse,” the group said in its report.

In the report titled “No Answers, No Apology: Police Abuses and Accountability”, HRW said that Suhakam and the EAIC had little success gaining access to police case files, key police standing orders governing use of force and firearms, and other information required to conduct meaningful investigations.

“Malaysia’s police are not accountable to anyone but themselves, and ordinary people across the country too often pay the price with broken bodies and tragically shortened lives.

“The Malaysian government needs to put in place effective oversight of the police to end the wrongful deaths, preventable abuse in custody, and excessive use of force on the streets,” said HRW’s deputy Asia director Phil Robertson.

Last June, the federal government’s revealed that 231 custodial deaths occurred between January 2000 and May 2013, with only two officially caused by the police.

In its report, HRW also accused Putrajaya and the police of abdicating their responsibility by failing to make the “policy changes necessary to ensure effective oversight and accountability in cases of wrongful deaths, mistreatment in custody, and excessive use of force”.

The 102-page report repeated the suggestion for a panel similar to the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC), which was proposed by a royal commission chaired by former Chief Justice Tun Mohamed Dzaiddin Abdullah in 2005.

In the continued absence of such a panel, however, it called for the EAIC to be reformed and given sufficient resource and authority to deal with complaints on police abuse.

The report noted that EAIC is “thinly staffed” with only one investigator and “insufficient resource” to deal with complaints on police abuse.

“We are being set up to fail if we don’t get the resources to do our job properly,” stated the report quoting an EAIC official.

The report suggested the EAIC be bolstered with measures to promote independence and impartiality among its commissioners, including making their positions permanent instead of the current practice of seconding them from the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).

Among HRW’s other recommendations were the formation of an “Ombudsman’s office” with the authority to act of complaints against errant police personnel.

“Ensure that the office reports directly to the IGP, has the power to intervene in all police investigations of abuse, and provides a public annual report of its activities.

It also proposed that the confidential standard operating procedure on use of force and firearms to include “an escalating scale-of-force guideline”, which specifies the appropriate response to a potential threat or lethal assault, and ensure that it is amended in line with the United Nation’s Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials.

The report was put together after interviews with 75 individuals including alleged victims of police abuses and their family members, lawyers, police officials including Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar, public prosecutors, and staff members of government commissions and non-governmental organisations.

Sumber : The Malay Mail