We get the cops we deserve
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Our police force made international headlines for its dramatic, military-style raid on a bridge tournament in Pattaya. They then fined 32 elderly foreign players for possessing more than the permitted 120 playing cards. Pattaya police chief Pol Colonel Su
Our police are again the world’s laughingstock, and we are right to be ashamed of them.
But you and I, dear reader, should also be ashamed of ourselves for letting the situation deteriorate this far. Thomas Carlyle noted that, “In the long run, every government is the exact symbol of its people, with their wisdom and unwisdom, we have to say, like people like government.”
In surveys, citizens regularly rank the police among the most-corrupt public agencies. Motorbike and car drivers break laws with impunity. The Red Bull heir who admitted hitting and killing a cop with his Ferrari remains free. The Koh Tao defendants were sentenced to death on the basis of DNA analysis by a police lab not accredited to do DNA analysis.
Yet few if any influential figures have raised their voices to insist that Prime Minister Prayut reform the cops. In fact, Prayut has explicitly refused to place such reform on the agenda. If we don’t insist that our leaders do their job in accordance with our needs, who will? If not now, when?
Our cops are ourselves, for we tolerate them when we shouldn’t.
Burin Kantabutra
