Police intimidation video: What happened before

ARCHIVES 2010

By admin-s On Oct 12, 2010

Pamela Lim’s previous video post has attracted a record number of hits on LoyarBurok. She has elaborated on her video with an account of what happened before she started filming and why she acted as she did. This was originally written as a comment to the original post and is now reproduced for easy reference.

The video can be viewed here.

I was flagged down after turning right at the junction of Federal Highway adjoining Jalan Gasing/Jalan University. When I stopped the car to ask what I was stopped for, the policeman said I committed an offence, for using the mobile phone without handsfree. I maintained that my phone was on the handsfree speaker & I was holding the phone at a distance as I spoke but they kept saying that I did not use the handsfree. They asked for my IC & driver’s license in which I complied & gave it to them. As they were holding the summons book, they didn?t read out which Act that I had violated when I asked them what the difference was, between using a handsfree kit & the handsfree speaker.

Then they asked me how I would like to settle the matter. Then I asked them, how do you normally settle matters like this. Then they said, if I want to settle it normally, it would be a hassle for me. Then they waited for my response. I told them, I didn’t think that I have committed an offence per se, but if they say that I have, then I am willing to accept the summons as I’m obviously in the wrong by using the phone according to them. I have always used the handsfree kit but that day, I hadn’t plugged it in & my mistake was answering the phone by putting it on handsfree speaker & was flagged down before I could put the phone on my holster. Look at the video again, my phone holster is stuck on the right of my windscreen.

As they insisted that I was wrong, I insisted that they gave me the summons for it. They began to taunt me with words in Malay & if I hadn’t read the RED BOOK by the Bar Council to know what to do when confronted by the police, I would not know what to do or what to expect next. I asked them for their names & their ID numbers in which they got defensive. Then I thought if they were going to hassle me further, I might as well record their actions on photographs. I photographed them with my phone so that I have evidence of my encounter with them should I want to challenge the summons in court. They began to yell at me for taking pictures, accusing me of “intimidating” them & that I have no rights to take pictures of their uniform as it was government property. When they began to intimidate me with their words, that was when I switched to video mode. What followed was all recorded for you to see.

I had no idea what they were getting at except that they were trying to intimidate me to submit to their demands. When they handed me the summons to sign, I wrote on it that “I do not accept as I had handsfree,” the police went livid. There is no law that states that you can’t write anything in protest of a summons for an offence that you do not admit to. Signing the summons denotes acceptance of the summons, not the offence. All the time, I had the video on, filming with my left hand. He shouted at me. Questioning what rights do I have, implying that I should have none when dealing with the police.

He kept questioning me WHO I AM. Does it matter who I am? I am an ordinary citizen who has rights. Does it mean that if I were a “somebody” this treatment would have been different? Does it mean that if I was a somebody, I would be let off? Why was the policeman so adamant in asking me who I was? What difference would it make if they had decided already that I had committed an offence? Or would my offence be a non-offence if they had known how my family had been a close source to the family of the late Tun Razak & the father of our independence, Tunku Abdul Rahman?

When they refused to return my IC & license, beckoning & summoning me to follow them back to the station, I refused & stated my rights & that I will report them for they had “stolen” my IC. That’s when they realised I knew the law. If I had committed an offence & obstructed justice, why didn’t they arrest me? They also refused to issue me the summons until they decided that they flouted the law themselves & returned my IC, license together with the summons issued. THEY REFUSED TO HAND ME THE SUMMONS FOR ME TO GO. This probably did not even occur to you because you didn’t watch the video properly. These policemen abused their power to talk down to a lady, threatened me by withholding my IC & license & yet demanded the respect at the same time: how is that possible? No one is allowed to hold on to your IC, not even security guards at the condo entry points.

All of you who condemned me obviously had never been in a situation like mine, where you were made to feel small & insignificant for refusing to cower under pressure for an offence that I did not consciously commit. Being a female, I would have been subjected to a lot worse if I was intimidated by them to follow them to goodness-knows-where. I was well aware of the fact that they didn’t have their ID numbers on them & had every reason to be suspicious. In a country where I?m viewed in the same light as a “pendatang” (illegal immigrant) & accused of having an ancestry of prostitutes, I ought to be wary of every encounter with anyone who come across to me in such a manner.

It’s interesting to see how many of you distort the topic of intimidation & threats when the police outnumbered me.