Police Extortion Points To A Fundamental Flaw

[marshbags]

Opinion

EDITORIAL Police extortion points to a fundamental flaw

The highly publicised alleged extortion by police of a pair of British tourists arrested at Suvarnabhumi airport for shoplifting has served to focus international attention on a problem long recognised in Thailand. Hopefully it will also focus attention here at home on solving the problem. In far too many instances and for far too long police have been accused and in some instances found guilty of setting up innocent people, taking them into custody and charging them with a crime, with the sole motive of trading the freedom of the bewildered victims for a profit.

As frightening as it must be to find oneself at the mercy of rogue security forces in a foreign country, the situation for Thai nationals who find themselves in a similar situation is probably just as desperate.

On Friday a Bangkok court sentenced eight anti-narcotics policemen to three years and four months in jail after it heard evidence that they had extorted money from a man they had charged with drug offences. Rather than take the man directly to the police station they first phoned his mother and demanded 500,000 baht for his release.

The eight policemen have also been accused of demanding 8.8 million baht from a Thon Buri businessman to withdraw drug charges against his wife, and the leader of the police team has been implicated in at least one other extortion case.

In January 2007 a lieutenant-colonel and seven other policemen were each sentenced to four years in jail for the robbery and extortion of a Burmese woman, who said the men took a mobile phone, 40,000 baht in cash and a gold necklace from her apartment after ''finding'' two planted methamphetamine pills. The woman was sentenced to two years in jail before she was able to obtain legal assistance which resulted in the conviction of the policemen.

Most commonly police extortion cases, when they surface, involve drugs, which are very easy to plant on a ''suspect''. But even if a suspect is guilty of sale or possession of drugs, clearly bypassing the due process of law through extortion is a serious crime in itself.

-- Bangkok Post 26-07-09

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Ref URL :- http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion...undamental-flaw

I note that drugs are one of the most common abuses in exploitation and extortion

All relevant and complimentatry to the ongoing re the EJK,s and multitude of abuses by the police ect. constantly mentioned.

marshbags