Putting Thai Police Back In Line

[brahmburgers]

A family neighbour borrowed and paid a million baht very early in his career to speed up the promotion process.

He now has Bangkok and Phuket properties worth quite a few million more.

I'm amazed at all the rich army and police officers in this country. And like you mentioned, we mean rich! They had a meeting of Ferrari owners here a few weeks ago...the article mentioned several police colonels were part of the group. My father was a colonel in the USAF and could NEVER afford anything like that....

Many parcels in my neighborhood are owned by police. You point at any hill, and if it's not part of a monastery, it's owned by a cop. Oddly, many of their parcels are undeveloped - just sitting there fallow.

My next door neighbor is a cop, and started building a very large house, looks to be seven or eight bedrooms. I asked him if he's building a guest house, and he just smiled and said, 'no.' However, the workers have been sent home twice - apparently because he ran out of money to continue. Maybe he didn't kiss ass as well as he was required - to keep the money flowing - I don't know.

I'm amazed at all the rich army and police officers in this country. And like you mentioned, we mean rich! They had a meeting of Ferrari owners here a few weeks ago...the article mentioned several police colonels were part of the group. My father was a colonel in the USAF and could NEVER afford anything like that....

It needs also some intelligence to get rich ...

or it is family inheritance like in the case of politicians like Abhisit.

Being rich as Thai doesn't mean these people are all corrupt.

I don't agree it takes intelligence to get rich. I would agree it takes determination and often a lack of consideration for others - or downright cold-heartedness. It's often the rich types, who have no qualms about raking in obscene amounts of money, while the people who assist in amassing that particular person's wealth - are below dirt poor poverty level. Not in every case, but all too often - and Thailand ranks among the most selfishcrats per sq.M. Just one of a thousand examples: Large Thai corporations gladly take 'interns' - eager university students - to do some of their muts and bolts jobs. Do you know how much those multi-billion baht companies pay those interns - some of whom work 60 hour weeks? ......about 25 baht per day. I've heard this from various individual students, so it's not a rare occurrence.

I've also heard of Thai contractors for big jobs who have a slew of migrant workers. For the final month's payday, they simply don't pay the workers. What can the workers legally do about it? Nothing / No recourse. Is that intelligent (on the part of the rich contractors)? No, it's simply swindling the poorest of the poor.

[EyesWideOpen]

After 10 years here of being shaken down by the cops, ( I travel EXTENSIVELY by motorcycle so am always running into their checkpoint / shakedown points), I realized that my contempt for them had reached the final level. This occured when I saw a policeman that was lying bleeding in the road  from an accident, and as I drove by the scene with an ambulance there, I thought to myself, som nam na. .......

If that is my attitude, I cannot even imagine the contempt and hatred the average Thai who had been shaken down his entire life must feel. 

1. Get rid of the famous inactive post,  just fire the rotten apples                                       2. Show front page photos in the Bangkok Post of corrupt police being led off to jail.   3. Do an asset check of everyone in the police department, would be interesting to       hear the stories of how ranking police have mansions and Benz cars on their             modest salaries........