Crime Track:
CIB sends top cops back to school to learn new skills, writes Wassayos Ngamkham
The bomb blasts at the Erawan shrine and the Taksin bridge more than three weeks ago have given police cause to review their skills and send a large number of investigators back for retraining.
As police search for the bomb mastermind, concerns have emerged that only some investigators are skilled at applying technology and new investigative techniques in high-profile cases.
The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) last week decided to send 200 new investigators back to “school” — not a police cadet academy, but a hotel in Pattaya set up as a classroom, where the officers learned what they are not told in textbooks.
Experience from leading senior investigators in criminal cases, including the latest bombings in the heart of Bangkok, were imparted for the first time.
“This is an urgent issue for them,” CIB chief Thitirat Nonghanpithak said. “They must keep abreast of the criminals who enter Thailand in unexpected ways.”
The bombing at the Erawan shrine, which killed 20 and wounded 130 people, shows the country needs better preparation for potential terrorist threats, Pol Lt Gen Thitirat said.
The investigation into the Erawan shrine bombing is “full of specific techniques” not found in the traditional police cadet curriculum, which is why police under the CIB need special training, he said.
The classroom was made up of 150 officers from the Crime Suppression Division and another 50 classmates from various CIB units like the Technology Crime Suppression Division and the Anti-Human Trafficking Division.
During their five-day training, which ended last Friday, the group was taught eight subjects, including how to make the most of security camera footage and the internet to track down suspects.
The course gave learners the big picture of an investigation, says Pol Maj Gen Sonkrit Kaeophaluek, who taught the class.
Students also took a close look at the components of a typical criminal plot, learning how to identify the key elements in a criminal’s plans.
Taking the bombing at the Erawan shrine as an example, Pol Lt Gen Thitirat said, officers were taught to look for where the bomb suspects acquired the materials to make a bomb. The key ingredients could include chemicals, timer devices and even screws.
Police need to know this information to trace a crime back to its starting point, the CIB chief said.
Another course was aimed at equipping students with the skills to track down suspects using footage from closed-circuit television cameras. This subject was taught by deputy city police chief Pol Maj Gen Suwat Chaengyotsuk, a leading police investigator in Bangkok.
Pol Col Phumin Poompunmuang, superintendent 5 of the Crime Suppression Division, taught a class about how to locate criminal targets by using clues from the internet and social media.
His co-lecturer, an Australian expert, was invited to share his experience in tracking down criminals in his country.
“Australian techniques in this field are internationally accepted and are many steps more advanced than ours,” Pol Col Phumin said.
The subject taught students how to use special devices to search out criminal suspects, he said.
Pol Col Phumin hopes the course gave Thai officers the skills they lacked. Many Thai officers find it difficult to keep up with in-depth and modern investigation methods because the annual round of job transfers prevents them from staying in a certain field of work long enough to develop expertise, he said.
So far only officers working in anti-drug operations have been trained in specific investigation techniques because they are less likely to change their jobs, he said.
“This training equally equips everyone with new investigative knowledge,” Pol Col Phumin said. “So, in the future, the workload will fall more evenly, not just on officers who have this know-how.”
Pol Lt Gen Thitirat hopes the training also will prepare police for what he described as unusual crimes which cause severe damage.
Crimes such as terrorist attacks are like a “severe epidemic that cannot be easily treated by ordinary doctors”, he said.