300 Police Posted At Klong Toei Market To Keep The Peace

[webfact]

300 police posted at Klong Toei market to keep the peace

Several hundred police are now providing security at Klong Toei fresh market, which has been the scene of many bloody clashes and shootings in recent months.

The latest victim is Pol Lt Col Kittipong Suwan, a deputy superintendent from Wat Phrayakrai Police Station.

"I was assigned to ensure safety at the market and to supervise the transportation of boxes from a stall to the Tha Rua police station," Kittipong said.

But around 2am Tuesday, someone blew a whistle and the light suddenly went out. The policeman was nearly shot.

"A bullet scraped past my left arm," he said, "I saw that the gunman was wearing red."

-- The Nation 2009/11/03

[gvallee2]

funny, in the spawn of 3mins i saw 4 retards walking across the middle of the street. yet no policeman moved his ass to enforce the 'walk above the traffic' enforcement..

Imo the 'policeman' they put around klongtoey are just death row inmates on a leash to scare the market's people. There is absolutely no way one of thailand's law enforcement professional passes up on 100baht

Edited November 3, 2009 by gvallee2

[babykyo]

How much baht did you recieve from the yellow? ( "I saw that the gunman was wearing red.")

Edited November 3, 2009 by babykyo

[aussiejosh]

I find that "the gunman was wearing red" to be very sus as well.

[on-on]

The story's kind of thin on background. Those protests have been going on for a long time now over the Port Authority selling off the market area to developers who are upping rents (this was the last version I heard). They should just declare it a common good (yeah, ha ha, I know) and make it a publicly sanctioned market since the dam_n thing's an institution, but of course just like everywhere else in the world they're pushing out the poor folks to let someone make a little extra cash on the side. It's been calmer for months, but I guess it's flaring up again - used to be they had a constant sit-in there with giant posters of the bloody protesters who had been beaten or shot. I'm sure like everything here it breaks to some degree across red/yellow lines, but used to be most of the protesters had yellow on for some reason (possibly work clothing?) and the protest didn't seem to have all that much to do with the red/yellow splits. Still, this is just farang observation and some broken conversation about it with various cab drivers.

Pain in the ass for traffic too when it flares up and Rama IV gets shut down, but that's kind of ancillary to the larger problem for the people.