Letter to Mr. Policeman, liberal-smashing, and my new camera

“We are a force for the nation, ensuring the security, survival and success of Singapore, and helping to build it into our best home. We are a police force that inspires the world.
We are united with the community. We care for and serve the community that we work in and with.”

-- The Shared Vision of the Singapore Police Force


Dear Mr. Policeman,

I never thought I’d treat this salutation as more than the title of my Sec 2 Moral Ed textbooks, but I’m so sorry.

I’m sorry the ability to keep our citizens safe has been taken away from you. I’m sorry the violent people who prowl our streets have the ability to attack with impunity, so long as “life” not be in danger (by the terribly shaky definition of “grievous hurt” lawyers have such a great time arguing over). I’m sorry they can now spit phlegm and vomit on the image of individual and community safety, and defile with their actions the harmony our leaders have so carefully built up.

If the ordinary man-in-the-street can lose four teeth to an assailant without you being able to do anything about it, I worry.

I worry for the superiors the force sees fit to place over you. Don’t they realise crime is more than white-collar embezzlement, more than walking about naked in one’s own home? Yet when there are assaults leading to permanent hurt, and spousal abuse under the guise of “family discipline” every night, and you have to walk away because your superiors have determined for you what is a seizable event and what isn’t... it isn’t only my safety I worry about.

It’s the country’s.

I’m not here to speculate on what could cause a policewoman to give away her service pistol to a cheat whose story stinks to high heaven, or a thug to gain the ability to attack innocents with impunity... but I simply want to make a statement with my stupid, non-elite head.

The Singapore Police Force exists to protect Singaporeans. Full stop.

My non-elite thinking leads me to operate under the assumption that ordinary citizens like me are the ones the SPF was created specifically to protect, to ensure I can move about, eat, work and sleep without fear of somebody harassing me, breaking into my house, or threatening my safety—and if they do, that justice be seen to be done and the offenders taken to face whatever music they deserve under our law. The scholarship holders they put over you, Mr. Policeman, don’t patrol the streets themselves, and don’t get their hands dirty and see the violence men can do to each other. Are these the kind of people the Singapore Police Force puts above field officers like you? If so, don’t let their petty distinction between offences stop you from investigating—as the ones on the scene, your power to stop and protect is the most immediately seen.

I don’t have the money for a lawyer. I don’t have hours and hours free to find out for myself what I should be being told outright. And I'm sure I join the average Singaporean in not caring a s**t about the difference between a police report, a magistrate’s complaint, or somebody taking the law into their own hands. (If the law isn’t in your hands, Mr. Policeman’s, it’s in somebody’s. And if that somebody has no compunction about harming people who annoy him in the slightest...) And I highly doubt any victim of a crime will be in a much of a frame of mind to listen to some half-wit exposition of the differences between a police report and a magistrate’s complaint. Not everyone has a degree in law—or the patience to do a filing clerk’s work for him. Why not simply classify reports into magistrates’ complaints and those requiring further investigation at the station proper? To us, a police report is a police report is a police report. Please, Mr. Policeman, remind your superiors of this.

And if it were a foreigner—say, a Caucasian visitor on business—who made a police report? I’m not sure he’d be told to make a “magistrate’s complaint”, whatever in the world that is.

That’s right, I’m bringing out the old “colonialist” card. But it’s something I hope to stand corrected on.

I may not know as much as the Cornell grad in your HQ’s HQ’s HQ, but I do know this—a fist in the face hurts, but what hurts a helluva lot worse is being abandoned and the attacker set free by the very people I entrust my life and safety to every day.

So, Mr. Policeman... it’s your authority on the “offence” scene. Not the lawmakers’, not Parliament’s, not the rapidly-promoted scholarship holders who see so little action they think the entire world conforms to the laws they stuff into their heads.

So let us (“us” including Singaporean and foreigner alike) see you using it, and giving us citizens the safety and peace of mind your posters and mission promise. The country—non-elites included—will thank you for it.

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Somebody will always take you to task if you speak from the gut. That’s why rhetoric like you find on http://takeastandagainstliberals.blogspot.com/ is so refreshing—it says for me what I have the civic-mindedness not to.

Its author is Jenn, a lady with decidedly anti-Democrat views and who’s not afraid to come out swinging, and heaven help anyone in her way. Singaporeans may find it irreverent, inspiring or anywhere in between, but she at least stands up and yells “Wrong!” Check out especially the post “Tokyo Rose”, in which celebrities today eerily echo the seductive Japanese propagandist of World War II.

In short, Jenn is like a conservative version of Christian Internet evangelist Jack T. Chick—extreme, unyielding, sometimes taking liberties with the record... but inspiring nevertheless. Now I don’t agree with all she says—some of her reported events are dubious at best, the action she supports sometimes downright offensive—but she is coming from the right place, with logic and rationality and a colourful flair for the English language to boot. Not to mention graciously exposing the hypocrisy right under our noses, such as when moderate Muslims in America somehow don’t denounce the oppression of other faiths by radicals who will stop at nothing short of utter Islamisation—by their very unpleasant definition.

(Yes, I faithfully read Chick’s material for a few years before the MDA banned his website. C’mon, it’s for Singaporean parents to teach their children to decide for themselves what they can or can’t read, not the MDA’s to stuff down EVERYONE’s throats.)

Those who are easily offended can either go elsewhere... or sit down and READ. Just don’t expect to leave without a thicker skin.

#

I love my new Samsung NV3 digital camera, even though I’ve never used some of its more... let’s say, unusual functions. “I need a camera that plays music,” comments one reviewer on GearAxis Unwired, “like I need a toaster that also vacuums the carpet.”

I didn’t know I’d bought a mag carrying a review before I bought the camera, but it doesn’t matter now—its pics are razor-sharp, and I’ve never looked better in shots. (If you know me and are reading this, please don’t correct me.) It’s so small it takes up almost no space in my bag, and a sleek purple-black design means it’ll go well with the dark colours I invariably end up wearing.