I had my then very modest one room apartment turned over by two police officers in 1994 - under the pretence they were looking for drugs and that I was a drug dealer. At the time of the raid I was at work and only my girlfriend was present in the apartment.

WHY? My friend, who incidentally, lived in the same apartment building, had a particularly nasty Loatian wife - who was at the time having an affair with a plain-clothes policeman who was working in the vicinity of my residence.

And, unfortunately and very naively, one drunken evening I made the monumental mistake of informing him of what his wife was up to when he was at work.

Silly me!

Very vindictive lot these BIB!

Police searches on foreigners mean very little in Thailand from what I can gather; normally an exercise in being seen to do the right thing at the time or an exercise in intimidation - in my case!

Pattaya City News OnlineOur News is Always New

LATEST NEWS

Saturday 10th March 2007

Angry Shop owner and the Copyright Police raid caught on tape.

An interesting story now from the Dum Phone Shop in South Pattaya. The owner of the shop is Khun Pichai aged 37 who called in journalists to his shop at 10.30pm on Friday regarding an incident which occurred on Wednesday Night at his shop which was caught on tape. He explained that a group of 6 armed men claiming to be Police Officers working in the Copyright Department entered his shop and demanded to inspect his laptop.

Khun Pichai correctly asked the men for their Police Identification Badges and a search warrant issued by the court. Both failed to materialize which aroused suspicion. The 6 men were not polite and one of the men was even carrying his firearm in his hand as if he was either about to use it or was prepared to threaten the shop owner with the weapon. Khun Pichai decided to film the men and gave us a copy of the tape. The men were clearly not happy with the filming and initially demanded the filming to cease. The brave shop owner stated that this was his shop and he was fully within his rights to take the pictures.

Eventually the men decided to leave the shop without checking the laptop despite them wanting to take the man and his computer to Pattaya Police Station for further investigation. Khun Pichai made a police report of the incident on Friday Night and officers at Pattaya Police Station promised to investigate this matter. We have had it confirmed from an anonymous source that the group are genuine Police Officers who will now most likely be disciplined.

We advise all business operators watching this program to not panic if confronted by so-called Copyright Police. Firstly, check their Police ID cards and then demand they produce a search warrant. If neither are produced call the emergency Police number 191 and refuse access to any computer until the local Police arrive.

importford - thanks for bringing this story to our attention - although I must admit I did see it on Pattaya City News about four or five days ago.

A truly shocking case of unabashed intimidation and harassment of a law- abiding shop keeper by some four or five guys who were, by all accounts, actual police officers based in Pattaya.

Scum.

This very brave and courageous shop-owner deserves the upmost respect.

It's a pity that the BIB are still allowed to behave with such impunity in Pattaya nowadays.

Disgusted

I was stopped some years ago up in the far North West driving down from Burma, the traffic police had a big road block and were working through many cars, trucks etc.

We were asked to sit under the trees while four cops went through everything for about ten minutes.

Nothing found, thanked and let on our way, nothing missing when we later checked the bags in the car.

If I remember correctly they didn't ask for ID, Passport or driving licence.