Broken windows: Crime and the cops

 

This country may be a house of cards, presided over by the blinkered and venal; but broken windows or not, we are the glue that binds

Sheila Santharamohana, Aliran

I first read, a few years ago, about the “Broken Windows” theory on urban decay, and the contributory roles both the community and the police have on crime.

Used successfully by former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, the theory suggests untended behaviour and property will encourage crime as any impression of neglect shows no one cares and no one is in charge.

Thus, a community flourishes if members maintain order, care for their environment and one another’s children.

But if disorder creeps in in the form of vandalism, the breakdown of common courtesy or a tolerance for bad behaviour, then the same stable community, could soon become a hotbed of fear and crime. Of course, the theory has its detractors, but in light of escalating crime, we can learn much.

Broken window 1: Monkey see, monkey do.

As part of the experiment into this theory, a car was abandoned in a poor neighbourhood and another one in a wealthy neighbourhood.

In the former, the car is stripped of all its valuable parts in an hour while the car in the wealthy part of town remains unmolested for a week.

Then, a window of the second car is smashed. Within minutes, it is a free for all – even the most respectable residents do not hesitate in random acts of vandalism. Hours later, the car is a shell, like the first in the poor neighbourhood.

The researchers concluded the broken window was a signal to everyone that there would be no consequences for actions on property that no one is clearly responsible for.

Allow me to draw a similarity with conditions in Malaysia.

The perception in Malaysia is that the authorities do not dare call the actions of the powerful few into account.

We have grown cynical, as the law and the justice system refuse to make government leaders and the police accountable to the office they hold.

The rest of us lose faith in the selective nature of our investigative and judicial system while enterprising others manipulate it until the system becomes an old joke.

A BBC news report in 2005 alluded to how the underworld survives in the country.

In 2007, the ex-IGP, Tan Sri Musa Hassan, decried the covert hand of leaders who frustrated police efforts in fighting crime by urging them to “keep one eye closed”.

Recently, a former drug pusher confessed in an interview with Free Malaysia Today that he had allegedly paid the cops in Negri Sembilan and Malacca a monthly RM30,000-RM50,000 (Free Malaysia Today) as protection fee on top of cash, gifts, holidays for top cops and festive ang pau.

Soon after, MyWatch’s chairman was shot, after receiving a death threat originating within fortress IPD of Jelebu (Free Malaysia Today) and before he could disclose the names of corrupt cops.

In response to a public outcry against gun-crime, the NST gives us a lesson on ballistics (NST, 2 August 2013), the police demand the return of the EO, and our PM makes vacuous statements.

So what are the rakyat to make of this?

Read more at: http://aliran.com/14896.html