Death by law

I'm rather suprised at the chorus of outrage and disbelief that has greeted the vicious attack on Chang Jiun Haur. Not that outrage isn't the right response for what happened. Even when attacked, it is the responsibility of the police to uphold the law. That means using minimal violence, sufficient to restrain, no more. There is no possible way that the police can claim the use of legitimate violence. The ludicrous attempt to claim that the four occupants of the car were involved in 'attempted murder' is just that - ludicrous.

What suprises me is the disbelief, the suprise that our police officers could be capable of such brutality. The disbelief has to be the result of a fairly wilful refusal to look and see what our officers (or some of our officers, let's not forget that there are good cops, and that they have a difficult time) have been doing for some time.

Even if we forget the 'small fry', the obviously overlookable detritus of society that we seem to think can be deprived of human rights because they are foreign or because they are poor, there are plenty of high profile cases that should have warned us of the nature of our cops. Top of the list, of course, is that a convicted thug was head of the police force for five years. Lest we forget, the judge who read out the conviction said "His action was inhuman. This is the worst act of indiscipline". He got a grand total of two months' imprisonment - and after his release, there were a slew of sympathetic news stories about how he was a 'broken' man.

Police officers have testified that they have seen other officers with detainees who were naked, and thought nothing of it (the officer in question was later found guilty of rape). There have been students, doctors and engineers who have complained of police brutality. At public assemblies, police have repeatedly been found guilty by the Human Rights Commission of using excessive force. Yet I can think of not a single incident where a police officer was charged.

Is it that suprising that the police behave with impunity? Is it that suprising that they think they can assault a young man and get away with it? Why should this case be any different?