Visit
to the Menteng Police Station,
Jl Sutan Syrahir, 1
By Jane Speller
This police
station covers Menteng and Cikini, two of the most affluent
areas of Jakarta.
Seventy-two embassies and ambassadors’ homes
are located in this district. Vice President
Yusuf Kalla has his official residence here.
The Governor of Jakarta KPK. Sutioso and
Ibu Megawati live here, while Bpk. Soeharto owns a
whole street. And that’s besides all the less important government
officials and offices located in Menteng, plus many of
Jakarta’s
rich and high society families’ homes, are considered.
You would expect to see a police station
that somehow reflects this wealth and status. Not
so! The station is a smallish building. There
is clearly little money available to spend
on the office: the walls are streaked with
water stains; the furniture is old and basic (in fact, the staff
had to
work hard to find 16 chairs for us); and the
curtains are faded and worn. The officers
still work using typewriters. There are a
couple of computers, but they told us that
the system was currently down, so they have
to type then fax all communications to Jakarta central office.
At the back of the station was the spouses’
area: each station has a spouses’ association
to support the families of policemen. This
station had its own kindergarten for pre-school
kids, a play area, plus a meeting room for
the spouses. In fact, the back area looked
like a mini community in its own right!
Finally, right at the very back were the cells in a
small U-shaped block. I saw about seven or
eight concrete cells with bars, with a small
communal area with wash facilities. They said
they could take a maximum of 50 prisoners.
Bpk. Yakub is the new Station Chief, having
arrived in early April. He is young (late
30s), spent six months in the Netherlands
as part of his training, and seemed articulate,
genuine, and extremely pleased that we had come. Not only did
he give us an excellent overview of the organization
and work of the station, but he also showed
us around – including the Criminal Investigation
Department (CID) offices and the cells!
Bpk. Eddy, from Jakarta’s central police headquarters,
acted as our interpreter, and Bpk. Ivan, a
Brigadier General in the force, who had arranged
our visit, also joined us. They were touchingly
pleased that we wanted to learn about the
Jakarta police.
Organization and Focus
There
are 172 police officers working from the Menteng
police station, covering an area that is extremely
complex to police and with a resident population
of 87,000. This number increases by some
50 percent during the day as people travel into
the area to work.
Half of the station’s time and resources are
taken up managing the threat of terrorist attacks
to residents (expatriate and Indonesian alike),
as well as managing demonstrations. The area
is home to a huge number of “V.V.I.P.s” (very,
very important people), so their security
is of major concern to the station. Naturally, the
station also works closely with the Jakarta Police
headquarters on security, because it is such
a special area. The rest of the time the station
looks after local safety and security from
conventional crime. The most common of these
in Menteng are automobile theft and robbery.
Car theft in Indonesia is straightforward
theft for quick sale. They do not have the
problem of joy riding!
The other main local problem is drug trafficking
and drug use. In the one CID
office we saw, of the 15 new cases being investigated
since February, 80 percent of them were narcotics-related.
There is no general police emergency number
in Indonesia. Residents should telephone their
local police station directly in an emergency.
In practice, Indonesians often report crime
to the head of their local RT, who passes the information on
to the station via their local PosPol.
Community Policing and the PosPol
As the station is under-staffed, they have
to be creative in the way they manage local policing.
To do this, they have copied community-policing
practices from Japan and the USA, and created
a system of small police posts or “PosPol”
throughout the district to better manage crime. Each
PosPol has ten officers. The police station holds
weekly meetings to co-ordinate its work with
the PosPol, the CID and the patrol police.
Currently, Menteng is divided into five areas,
each of which has two or three small police
posts, depending on the conditions in each
area. Each PosPol is sub-divided into sectors,
so each police officer covers one or two RTs
(the smallest unit of local community). Thus,
each officer is in direct contact with local
people on matters of local security and crime.
These officers also establish working groups
with other key members of the local community
to work together against crime. Each PosPol
has its own system of working and focus, recognizing
that communities differ.
Recruitment
While there is currently little budget for
training and recruitment, they are trying to improve
the situation. They try to recruit local people
as they consider it useful to have police
officers who understand and have contacts
with the local community. Unfortunately, according
to Bpk. Yakub, since 1997, it has been very
hard to get anyone to consider a job with
the police: the salary is poor and people’s
perceptions of the police are very negative.
To combat this, the officers have started
a socialization program about the police
within the local community, speaking at schools and with other groups in the hope
that this will start to change attitudes and increase recruitment.
They are also trying to increase the number
of policewomen in the force; women are currently
reaching the Chief of Sector level (i.e. station
chief), but not beyond.
Conclusion
As I learned more about the Indonesian National
Police (INP), what struck me most was how
well they are doing despite the challenges.
Repeatedly in my research I came up against
a charm honesty, embarrassment, and humility
about their problems.
I wish them lots of luck as they continue
to pursue their reforms. The will is clearly there
among some members of the force. It would
be very interesting for someone to repeat
this topic in a study group in five or ten
years time to see what has changed.
Published in The Indonesian Heritage Society Newsletter,
October 2005
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