Dirty Harry & His Doctors

These days, I rarely have the opportunities to actually spend the time to have a proper conversation with my dad, the playboy. Well, OK, perhaps it's not so much about the opportunities—maybe it's more like I'd rather avoid to have those conversations. We can rarely agree on anything, so whenever there are things that we can agree on, it would feel like a lotto strike. Of course since he's my dad, I still let him have the last say.

I don't normally give in very easily whenever I feel strongly about anything, and I'm sure most of my readers can see that trait in me. I try to consider the opposing arguments for as long as I can; and I'd expect that the other side would return the favour. But if the opposing side does not bother to consider my arguments, then I will gracefully withdraw from the debate. For I do not see the prospect of the debate arriving at anything meaningful.

I had one such debate with the playboy recently—it's about the lad, Kugan, who died while he was in the legal custody of the police. The story has again shown that our police has a strange way of conducting their business. Malaysia's police force is famous for many similar stories in the past. We have heard of a policeman who raped a teenage girl who was brought in for interrogation. Even the (former) top fellow in the police force has been known to beat up a prisoner. What's more, he did it in a most cowardly fashion—he ordered his men to blindfold the prisoner before he executed some Mike Tyson maneuvers on him.

Put yourselves in the shoes of the police personnel. You've just caught this guy who you're convinced is a bloody car thief. But he just won't admit his crime. You have strong reasons to believe that he is the guy you've been looking for. But you can't do very much if you can't get a confession from him—except of course if you beat the confession out of him. Would you adopt the Dirty Harry approach?

The playboy is of the opinion that the police should be allowed to use force to get the confessions from criminals. If they are not allowed to use force, then many criminals would probably escape the punishments they deserve. A lot of the police's efforts would go to waste.

I don't quite agree with his views. In life, a lot of the times we just can't take things for granted. Sometimes things may not be like what they appear to be. Some people may appear convincingly guilty, when actually they are not. I believe that everyone should be given the benefits of the doubt. Conduct your investigations as much as you like; interrogate exhaustively if you must, but not with physical force.

If we can allow police brutality, one of these days some of us may find ourselves in prison for a crime we did not commit, yet the police is allowed to beat a confession out of us. It always seems OK when it happens to others, but not when it happens to us. Furthermore, I am even willing to risk a hundred hardcore criminals escaping the gallows for the sake of sparing an innocent person the punishment of a crime he did not commit.

Apart from the possibility of convicting the wrong person, police brutality also opens the door to abuse. And unfortunately, our police force is known to be quick to take advantage of things like that. And even if they did conduct an investigation, we are kept guessing if the investigation was conducted appropriately.

In the Kugan's case, for example, police post-mortem found the death of Kugan as "being due to fluids in the lungs"; whereas a second post-mortem "found 42 marks, burns and contusions throughout the body. It declared that Kugan was beaten so badly that his muscle tissues broke down, made their way into the bloodstream and to his kidneys, causing them to fail."

The first post-mortem was conducted at the Serdang Hospital Mortuary; and the second post-mortem was conducted at the Universiti Malaya Medical Centre. One has to wonder how the Serdang Hospital's doctor missed those findings during the first post-mortem.

Now all eyes are on The Attorney-General's Chambers. While we are waiting for his decision, the good doctor who conducted the second post-mortem probably needs to get round-the-clock protection, not by the police of course, because otherwise he would be the next person performing the disappearing act (we've had a couple of those in Malaysia, haven't we?).

In the mean time, I think Dirty Harry and his doctors should be prepared for a lot to answer.