Police Commission Votes to Remove 'Big Joke' from Service

[Purdey]

Hard to definitively say guilty without revealing a shred of evidence. 

Hopefully, any civil case brought by Big Joke will show any evidence they have. Have not.

To have our to have not - isn't that some kind of movie?

[lordgrinz]

Is Thailand an At-Will employment country? I mean can't they just remove him for whatever reason they want? 

[Tropicalevo]

3 hours ago, NemoH said:

Hahaha.. the fight continues .. I read that Joke was appointed by the junta.. whereas Tork is by Thaksin .. so they are getting the police force back .. 🤣🤣

anyway it’s just popcorn season for the rest of us … 🤣🤣

BJ was also suspended by the Junta and removed as head of Immigration. (He wanted an investigation into the bidding for the biometric systems that were eventually installed.  Said that there was corruption in the bidding process.)

Immigration has gone downhill since then.

[Shocked farang]

We farangs will always miss our Big Joke! 

[dallen52]

He won't go without a fight.

Last thing they want is him spilling the beans.

Probably some other high ranking and lucrative position will be offered him.

(To keep him quiet)

[dallen52]

1 hour ago, Purdey said:

Hard to definitively say guilty without revealing a shred of evidence. 

Hopefully, any civil case brought by Big Joke will show any evidence they have. Have not.

To have our to have not - isn't that some kind of movie?

I thought the movie was

"A few dollars more"..

 

[lordgrinz]

Just now, dallen52 said:

He won't go without a fight.

Last thing they want is him spilling the beans.

Probably some other high ranking and lucrative position will be offered him.

(To keep him quiet)

 

I would say from the overwhelming vote reaffirming his dismissal, that whatever he knows, it isn't enough to scare them.

[Purdey]

Hard to definitively say guilty without revealing a shred of evidence. 

Hopefully, any civil case brought by Big Joke will show any evidence they have. Have not.

To have our to have not - isn't that some kind of movie?

[sambum]

2 hours ago, JBChiangRai said:

 

Nobody in a senior position in the police is honest.

 

You buy your promotions in a secret auction.  Lower members are given targets of how much they must collect and pass up the chain.  Everyone has a target they must pass up the chain of command, over and above that target they can keep.  If you don't play their game you don't get promoted.

 

Aspiring district chiefs often bid half a million dollars or more for the top job.  The numbers involved are vast.

 

The problem is this guy knows all the dirt on everyone, he's more than likely to have been told go quietly and you can keep your ill-gotten gains, but he isn't going quietly or easily, it's a big problem for all the seniors, I am surprised he is still alive, IMHO he must have spread the dirt with lawyers to be released on his untimely death.

 

"................go quietly and you can keep your ill-gotten gains,........."

 

The problem is that he doesn't need his "ill gotten gains", having such a wealthy wife, which is why he is unlikely to go quietly, and I think you are right about leaving the dirt with lawyers. 

It leaves the hierarchy in a difficult position - for once they are on the back foot, and can't buy their way out of trouble.

 

As a previous poster has said, he ain't gone yet!

[John Drake]

3 hours ago, rwill said:

I'd just like to thank him for making me keep money in the bank all year long instead of the 3 months out ot the year that it used to be.

 

If that is all that was done by BJ and Prayuth, then be thankful. What's coming up in September could shatter you completely. Fact us, we went through an era of unprecedented stability at immigration under first BJ then Prayuth. 

[john donson]

if he is not RTP, he cannot run his gamble business and others without eventually going to pay some other dirty cops

[spidermike007]

Great result. It is long overdue. Now, with his connections, one hopes he remains banished. When he was chief of immigration, he made a constant fool of himself, by his ridiculous xenophobic rants. Recently, as deputy national police chief, he hogged the spotlight, with his fake crime buster image. I consider all the PR, all the grandstanding, all the hogging of the limelight, the nonstop press conferences, statements, declarations, and proclamations and crackdowns to be window dressing, meant to deceive the most naive among us.

Think about how many of the guys he went after. Then research how many were actually convicted and jailed. Then consider the fact that he was one of the top cops in a land where cops are known to be crooked. The RTP at its inception seems to have been created with a status quo from the government. We will NOT pay you a living wage, but you have a franchise, and the limit of your income is based solely on your own creativity and initiative, and you will always be protected. Is that not the case? He spent alot of time and effort trying to convince the public he was clean, and a real crime buster. I always knew this was fake and that he was a publicity hound and loved the limelight.

He was the chief of immigration. Then the deputy police chief. Both of those are pyramid schemes. Few immigration and police officers are clean. And the money gets funneled to the top. So, the money laundering was necessary to clean what was likely billions of baht, over the years. This joker likely has a $20 million lakefront château in Switzerland or a penthouse in NYC, and multiple overseas accounts, where he is stashing his ill gotten gains. The real mystery is why he was caught. The cops are above the law. He must have pissed someone off.

Joke (pre-cadet class 31; Police Academy class, or PAC, 47) is no common cop. His police officer father was the chauffeur for Thaksin Shinawatra’s wife Pojaman’s Police Lieutenant-General father. Perhaps this chumminess with Pojaman’s family had contributed to Joke leading police security for Thaksin when the latter visited Chiang Mai in March 2024. Joke’s father was also said to be close to ex-deputy premier General Prawit Wongsuwan and politico Sanoh Thienthong. Joke, who is married to a billionaire tycoon’s daughter, has admitted to paying journalists to write favorable stories about him. He is perhaps the fastest-rising police officer in recent Thai history, already a becoming a major-general at 42 but retiring only in 2031. (The police retirement age is 60 while officers usually reach major-general rank at about 50 years of age.) Cronyism at it's finest.
 

[Dan O]

4 hours ago, jippytum said:

Big joke lost his place in the money trough. 

He has plenty if his own money along with his wife and family fortune.   Do a Google search and you'll find he's quite wealthy in his own right and not from the presumed corruption 

[Dan O]

It'll be interesting turn if he starts to tell the history of what he knows and who's been involved. He'll land somewhere important just not where he planned as he doesnt fit the ideas of the current admin

[Mr Meeseeks]

13 minutes ago, Dan O said:

It'll be interesting turn if he starts to tell the history of what he knows and who's been involved. He'll land somewhere important just not where he planned as he doesnt fit the ideas of the current admin

 

Who he is in conflict with has far more power than his backers have. 

 

See @bamnutsak post earlier in the thread.

[jippytum]

14 minutes ago, Dan O said:

He has plenty if his own money along with his wife and family fortune.   Do a Google search and you'll find he's quite wealthy in his own right and not from the presumed corruption 

Do you think rich people are not greedy and corrupt

[sungod]

5 hours ago, NemoH said:

Hahaha.. the fight continues .. I read that Joke was appointed by the junta.. whereas Tork is by Thaksin .. so they are getting the police force back .. 🤣🤣

anyway it’s just popcorn season for the rest of us … 🤣🤣

 

Google who Torsak's brother is

[crazykopite]

War is about to break out this guy will fight back by whatever means I’m sure he’s got a lot of information about fellow superiors   that he can use 

[Sig]

At that level of power... it may be healthy to let them chew each other up a bit. I don't think there's such a thing as any honest person in those various positions. If there ever is one, it'll become apparent very quickly because he will be hated by all sides, except perhaps a few who don't carry so much power, as well as a handful who side with him in order to ride his coattails up the ladder, and maybe even a few weaker ones who he actually emboldens to be honest as they had wished they could, but didn't have the guts to go against the system until someone with an iron backbone took the reins. He will be loved by a large number of the populous but be derided as a "populist" and he will be vilified and disowned as though none of his haters were ever coworkers or friends before. Incredibly highly unlikely for such a man to be successful, but once in a blue moon it does happen.
This is not that case. Whoever gets chewed up and spit out... probably serves him right just as much it would serve the other guy right.

[NoshowJones]

8 hours ago, smedly said:

boy do they want rid of him bad

 

i suspect he's too honest for their liking, can't have that now can we - someone not willing to bend

If he is as rich as what I have read, his honesty must surely be very questionable.

[calbts2]

5 hours ago, Ironmike said:

The immigration was much better when he was in charge, I just recently returned on a visa issued by an agency and the problems I had in Bangkok because of this visa were amazing they wanted me to pay them 5000 baht and then nothing would be wrong until I said I was going to walk back into the main hall and start yelling to people to video my problems then amazingly enough I was told to come down and suddenly nothing was wrong with the visa and I was sent on my way,, this corruption is so wide spread now that Taksins is back it needs to stop. 

I disagree. Immigration was much easier to deal with before "Big Jerk" took over and either influenced or directed many changes that made things harder - pressure on some Embassies to eliminate income affidavits, mandatory health insurance for Non-O-A, and strict enforcement of TM-30.

[ElwoodP]

Some off topic posts removed.

[harryviking]

He is just to dangerous for the corrupt politicians!! 

[Burma Bill]

7 hours ago, hotchilli said:

The fighting has just begun, watch Surachate open up a can of worms.

 

Yes indeed. I bet he has a lot of incriminating evidence about people in very high places! 

[mokwit]

6 hours ago, RobU said:

He didn't introduce them, they were introduced by his political masters. He enforced them, he did his job and didn't allow foreigners to bribe immigration officials to look the other way. 

Yes it could have come from Anupong P or Prawit, but it seems that the agent business just carried on as before  - we never heard that he was going after the "corrupt" IO's who were facilitating this - just a collective punishment of the law abiding extension applicant which had the likely effect of pushing MORE people to use agents.......................

 

 

[mokwit]

5 hours ago, Tropicalevo said:

BJ was also suspended by the Junta and removed as head of Immigration. (He wanted an investigation into the bidding for the biometric systems that were eventually installed.  Said that there was corruption in the bidding process.)

Immigration has gone downhill since then.

That is one interpretation, the other is that he was put there to oversee the bidding process by a Patron with expensive horological tastes. Quite possibly his departure was due to ruffling of feathers, but maybe not as you suggest.

[off road pat]

9 hours ago, PeachCH said:

No, he is not honest! 

Hm,.. He seems to be more, or less, less corrupt as the others.

[BobBKK]

11 hours ago, smedly said:

boy do they want rid of him bad

 

i suspect he's too honest for their liking, can't have that now can we - someone not willing to bend

 really?  wow

[Kerryd]

7 hours ago, rwill said:

I'd just like to thank him for making me keep money in the bank all year long instead of the 3 months out ot the year that it used to be.

Um no. You can thank all the grifter foreigners on this site and others like it that continuously bragged about how they could get around the "800k in the bank" by using agents to scam the system. That is what lead to having to keep the money in the bank.

People have this ridiculous notion that no one in the Thai gov't pays any attention to what is being said in the various chat forums - in the various languages.

People - on this site (and others) - used to brag about how many years they'd stayed  in Thailand simply by making a once a month border run. Sheesh, when I was between contracts back in '05-'06 I did 7 or 8 border runs myself. But I didn't run around bragging to people about it.

Then suddenly there was a crackdown. You could only do 3 border runs in a year and they meant "a year". Boom ! Goodbye to a lot of fake tourists.

Then people bragged about how they could get around the 800k in the bank by "borrowing" the money for a day from an agent so they could get the bank letter and update their passbook. Then pay it back to the agent along with their "fee" the next day.

That led to another crackdown, requiring us to keep the money in the bank for 3 months. That was meant to cut out those agents as most of them weren't going to trust you with their 800k for 3 months. (Not too mention what they'd charge for that.)

Then people started bragging that they were able to get around that (again) using "agents" (again) who would "arrange" to make it look like you had that money in an account for the prescribed time.

That lead to Immigration cracking down on us - again. Now, thanks to all those people who are full of kwaii khee about how  rich they are when in fact they are broke and always trying to scam the system, you have to keep 400k in the bank all year and 800 k in the account for 5 months.

Remember, originally that "800k" was the money Immigration expected you (as a single foreigner) would need to live in Thailand for one year.

I remember back around 2011 (?) or 2012, when Immigration actually wanted to see transactions (withdrawals) on the account your 800k was in to prove you were using it to live on.

(That was in Jomtien back then. I think they asked me twice and I showed them the 800k in the Fixed Term and whatever I had in my savings account and that satisfied them. Then they stopped caring if you were actually spending any of the 800k as a lot of people were keeping it safe in a Fixed Term account.)

And you can bet that when people start bragging about how they are able to stay here for years using the new 90 Day Visa Exemption Stamps (once that's approved) there'll be another crackdown.

It's almost like, gee, maybe they are paying attention to all the chatter going on in forums like this and maybe they are cluing in about not just how people are scamming the system, but just how many of them seem to be doing it.

Whether or not Big Joke is the "one honest mango in the orchard" or not, there seems to be a large power struggle going on behind the scenes at the highest levels.
Old guard, new guard. Junta appointees, Thaksin appointees. 

You can bet a lot of people "up there" are not happy with Thaksin being back and pulling the strings behind the scenes. He never really answered for all the stuff he got away with before skipping the country nor for the "alleged" reasons he was ousted that had nothing to do with his corruption but we can't talk about it here (or anywhere really).


 

[RobU]

1 hour ago, mokwit said:

Yes it could have come from Anupong P or Prawit, but it seems that the agent business just carried on as before  - we never heard that he was going after the "corrupt" IO's who were facilitating this - just a collective punishment of the law abiding extension applicant which had the likely effect of pushing MORE people to use agents.......................

 

 

Good point