Commentary/Ashwin Mahesh

Supercop chooses to hide behind a system he claims is flawed rather than step out and take the fight to the enemy

Every once in a while, Supercop shows up on the news. Usually, it is in connection with something that involves police work, although he is by no means restricted to such events. Stray incidents that confuse the executive with the legislature are not completely eschewed, nor is butt-paddling a forgotten art. Not while Supercop is around to keep them going. And surely not while we remain myopic enough to uphold him as a champion of national integrity.

To be sure, I can hear the cries of "rabble-rousing secular forces" and "busy mollycoddling terrorists" going up in the distance and getting nearer and louder. If I'm going to be drowned in the noise, I may as well go down swinging.

One has to feel sorry for the police. We're not exactly a nation of law-abiding Singaporean clones, and it is more than the cops can do to keep abreast of our wily schemes. From Laloo, Veerappan and Dawood to the odd corporator or money-juggler, the big guns of crime are neatly positioned to outfox and outpurchase any well-meaning policeman. As if these were not enough, a dizzying array of petty thieves are running rings around our uniforms of law and order. Terrorists add another whole new dimension.

Worse still, our hapless legislators have no intention of enacting sensible laws or upholding the few already on the books. Usually, they are busy deciding whether to stop the odd mosque from being torn down, or figuring out why governors like the Honorable Sheila Kaul shouldn't have their butts whipped out of office (now there's something Supercop could have done faster than Rao and his due course) or deciding what exactly "discretionary" means. In the meantime, cops are expected to figure out which end of the law to apply without knowing if they can expect a medal or a transfer to Gurdaspur in appreciation. A sorry state of affairs if ever there was one.

But Supercop and his spokes-brethren, I have no sympathy for them. For them, it's take no prisoners. That's a theme they can identify with.

Let me regurgitate the old party line for you. How on earth can we expect cops to play by the rules if the rules serve only to help the criminal get off scot free? It is better to nab the fellow and give him a nice clean break -- usually in the head -- than to go through endless batwing doors of crime, arrest, bail, training and back to crime. No great loss, the hole in the head is widely deserved. End of story. The hell with human rights -- for the most part, these scumbags are neither right nor human.

How can I put this mildly? Male bovine droppings - yeah, that sums it up nicely.

The last time I looked, we hadn't lost Punjab and we weren't about to lose Kashmir, despite all the noise that would have you think otherwise. But don't kid yourselves thinking that it takes an armload of Supercops to get that done, and that's the only way to do it. That's just convenient -- crime ridden legislature, underpaid cops, savvy terrorists, what's the alternative to the soft sound in the night that goes 'bump'? Yeah, real convenient. Go get a sign that says 'Avatar Singh for President' -- the vacancy will be nicely filled.

If the umpteen gangsters that are rounded up daily are going through the rounds of our justice charade, whose fault is that? If IAS and IPS officers don't have the spine to do anything other than toe the political line, whose fault is that?

I'll tell you whose -- yours and mine, the media's and Supercop's.

The frauds who call themselves law-makers neither have any appreciation of the law nor care what you or I make of their devilry. It's party time, as far as they can tell. And drinks are on the House, with lip service to remember it is the people's House. These worthies can hardly be expected to do anything reasonable to change the face of crime or terrorism in any way, and to wipe it out entirely is beyond even their wildest dreams. Quite the opposite, the elimination of crime is their worst nightmare. With about half of most legislative bodies drawn from the ranks of avaricious criminals, this is to be expected, and for us, deserved. Remember the vote?

If we briefly hoped that the judiciary would fill this gaping void in our public sense of morality, those hopes too are mostly dashed. These luminaries are so steeped in the letter of the law that they have little use for its spirit. Intellectual mumbo-jumbo between lawyers, countless episodes of appeals, incompletely or improperly registered charges -- precisely what was the judge doing when those charges were being admitted -- and other mind-games pass through the dockets with impressive zeal, and nothing happens at the end of it all. Everyone is guilty, but no one is punished or punishable, that's the law, and the judges have upheld it. The odd sermon to Parliament will deflect any questions or criticism of their judicial acumen, if such a thing exists.

As for the odd one who stands out from the pack and refuses to back down to wayward politicians, he can always be told to defer to Parliament or some such crap that is supposed to teach him his place in our great democracy. A few headlines that scream 'Judge goes overboard' will fix him nicely. It's quite another matter, apparently, that overboard is where most of the action is, and precisely where the judge ought to be. If the media can stop glorifying the structure of parliamentary democracy and examine its functioning for even a day, it will be more than obvious that only a fool would defer to this Parliament.

So much for us regular Joes and the media. But why pick on Supercop, you say? I'll tell you why. Because he chooses to hide behind a system that he claims is flawed rather than step out and take the fight to the enemy. If Supercop had said toothless laws are helping terrorists and con artists get off scot free, and if he had demanded that parliament and the various legislative assemblies sit up and enact laws with teeth, if he had gone after the judges who found it helpful to look the other way, and if he had confronted more of us with the shame of our convenient posturing, he might have been half the man he's made out to be. And I'd put him on that pedestal myself. Instead, he said "What's a cop to do?" and called time-out from the law to nail a few hides on his own.

Cops caught in the crossfire between dirtbag criminals on one side and insensitive slinkies posing as legislators on the other side simply invented the law of the one-minute trial and one-bullet sentence. With enough people agreeing that this is a necessary evil, they became heroes notwithstanding the complete ignominy of their actions. Net result -- we're going around in circles with laws that are breached more than observed.

We can't hide behind the comfort of indifference and wink tolerance of cold-blooded murder. Licensing the cops to kill and hurt is a dangerous game even if it seems to help now. It will turn full circle soon enough. Don't take my word for it -- ask Martin Massey. We can't be deciding who the good cops are based on what they do to please us. We should instead be looking at what they do that truly protects us.

If we want stable governments that enact humane and sensible laws and a police force that has their backing and ours, then we should elect the people who will represent us as the backbone of a civil society. If we instead elect the first goon who comes along and then cry foul over every atrocity he either commits or ignores, that becomes a convenient excuse to parade the cop who dons the robes of the arbiter, prosecutor and hangman.

If the media chooses to go along with a parliament which claims special status that demands deference, and if judges and prosecutors are hogging the limelight instead of working the benches, all that's our fault too. We can demand adherence to a civil standard that we ourselves expect to be treated by, or some of us can be Jalil Andrabis while the others roll out the red carpet for vigilantes.

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