Nip gangsterism early

KUDOS to the Royal Malaysian Police, especially the Penang police, for paying special attention to the activities of students being recruited into gangs.

This strategy of recruiting students into gangs has been adopted by gangsters since time immemorial because they are the everlasting pool of “human resource”.

Once these young boys are involved, the percentage of them getting out is small or until they shift to another town.

From experience, it has been observed that criminals who are violent and have no qualms about hurting their victims normally have been involved with gangs from a young age.

Hence nipping the problem in the bud is definitely the right action, but unfortunately, it could be a humongous task which could also be toothless due to the absence of crime prevention laws.

In Penang in the 80s, it was observed that gangster activities were at its peak with gang fights, murders and violent robberies being the norm but fortunately with the availability of the Crime Prevention Law, about 200 of the splinter gangs were disrupted and dismantled with many of the members being incarcerated or forced to turn over a new leaf.

Today, gang activities could be said to have a new lease of life with the repeal of the Emergency Ordinance [EO] and the “Godfathers” and criminal syndicate bosses can tell the police to go fly kite because they are almost untouchable!

When two Hong Kong Metro police superintendents came to study the ways that police here dealt with the problem of gangsterism in the 80s, they were so envious and said: “There would be no triads with this preventive law.”

Our police can only be that effective against gangsters and syndicate criminal bosses if our laws provide for it, lest it would be accused of abuse of power and not following the rule of law. DATUK KHOO AH SEE Shah Alam