Nur Asyiqin Mohamad Salleh
The Straits Times
Saturday, Mar 08, 2014
The number of police officers on the ground during the Little India riot was again an issue of contention at on Wednesday's Committee of Inquiry (COI) into the unrest.
This after panel member Tee Tua Ba asked Deputy Assistant Commissioner (DAC) David Scott Arul if he was aware there were already 190 officers on the ground before troops from the Special Operations Command (SOC) arrived.
When the deputy commander of the SOC replied that he did not know, Mr Tee said: "I'm telling you this was collected from investigations."
The issue over how many police officers were at the scene on Dec 8 took prominence after several of them said they did not move in on the rioters because they were outnumbered by an angry mob of hundreds of men.
One of the senior officers, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Lu Yeow Lim, was grilled on Tuesday by Mr Tee, who said records show that there were 130 men on the ground when a police patrol car was flipped over that night.
DAC Lu, however, corrected Mr Tee, who is a former police commissioner. He said that while records show there were 111 officers on the ground, only 47 were dealing directly with the rioters.
The number of officers at different points during the riot were collected by the investigation team appointed by the COI, he added.
The investigators had extrapolated the number of police officers on the ground from GPS data of police vehicles sent to the scene.
But the officers are not individually tracked, he added. Hence it was not an accurate reflection of the strength of the police during the violence.
Many of the 47 officers responding to the riot, for instance, were scattered over four different points along Race Course Road.
There were also others who were injured and were on the way to hospital, said DAC Lu.
Several other witnesses pressed by the COI to provide a number for the officers on the ground also could only offer estimates.
The chaos that night made it impossible to get an accurate headcount, they testified.
Yesterday, the committee heard from DAC Arul that smoke and flames from burning vehicles at the scene obscured his vision.
Jammed airwaves as the violence ravaged Little India also made communicating with other officers at the scene difficult, DAC Lu had said on Tuesday.
When Mr Tee put it to him that "there were a hundred over men" at his disposal, DAC Lu disagreed.
"Maybe on paper in the courtroom," said DAC Lu. "The reality is I did not know how many men there were that night because communication was bad."
The Straits Times
Saturday, Mar 08, 2014
The number of police officers on the ground during the Little India riot was again an issue of contention at on Wednesday's Committee of Inquiry (COI) into the unrest.
This after panel member Tee Tua Ba asked Deputy Assistant Commissioner (DAC) David Scott Arul if he was aware there were already 190 officers on the ground before troops from the Special Operations Command (SOC) arrived.
When the deputy commander of the SOC replied that he did not know, Mr Tee said: "I'm telling you this was collected from investigations."
The issue over how many police officers were at the scene on Dec 8 took prominence after several of them said they did not move in on the rioters because they were outnumbered by an angry mob of hundreds of men.
One of the senior officers, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Lu Yeow Lim, was grilled on Tuesday by Mr Tee, who said records show that there were 130 men on the ground when a police patrol car was flipped over that night.
DAC Lu, however, corrected Mr Tee, who is a former police commissioner. He said that while records show there were 111 officers on the ground, only 47 were dealing directly with the rioters.
The number of officers at different points during the riot were collected by the investigation team appointed by the COI, he added.
The investigators had extrapolated the number of police officers on the ground from GPS data of police vehicles sent to the scene.
But the officers are not individually tracked, he added. Hence it was not an accurate reflection of the strength of the police during the violence.
Many of the 47 officers responding to the riot, for instance, were scattered over four different points along Race Course Road.
There were also others who were injured and were on the way to hospital, said DAC Lu.
Several other witnesses pressed by the COI to provide a number for the officers on the ground also could only offer estimates.
The chaos that night made it impossible to get an accurate headcount, they testified.
Yesterday, the committee heard from DAC Arul that smoke and flames from burning vehicles at the scene obscured his vision.
Jammed airwaves as the violence ravaged Little India also made communicating with other officers at the scene difficult, DAC Lu had said on Tuesday.
When Mr Tee put it to him that "there were a hundred over men" at his disposal, DAC Lu disagreed.
"Maybe on paper in the courtroom," said DAC Lu. "The reality is I did not know how many men there were that night because communication was bad."
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