SIBU: Parti Bumi Kenyalang (PBK) secretary-general Priscilla Lau fully supported the government’s move to establish an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IDPMC).
The IDPMC Bill 2019 was tabled by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Liew Vui Keong at the Parliament sitting on July 17.
However, it would only be read and passed at the next Parliament meeting at the end of the year.
Lau, a lawyer, told a press conference yesterday she supported the Bill but would only be happy “if it does what it does”.
Lau said once the Bill was passed, all three parties — lawyers who were also officers of law, the police and the court — needed to work together to ensure justice.
“Very often, we, lawyers, have no one to turn to. If we turn left and right, all are the same. But with this Bill, there is now a proper channel to lodge our complaints,” she said.
Lau cited two cases which she had encountered with the men-in-blue.
“In 2010, I lost my laptop computer from my office. A police officer told me I had to pay if I wanted it back.
“I told him the laptop was 10 years old and of not much value to me but the files inside were important to me. He showed me the laptop. I opened it and all my files were no longer inside.
“He later told me to go to the police station to claim it,” she said.
Another case, she said, involved a group of native landowners in Rantau Panjang after the 2016 state election.
“These landowners came to me for help as a plantation company had encroached onto their land. They had paperwork to prove that the land was theirs.
“The then district police chief met the plantation owner in an office in the plantation. He told me that the plantation owner could not prove the ownership of the land. So the landowners locked up the place but for the next seven days, the police staged a vigil there and unlocked all the padlocks on behalf of the plantation.
“The next morning, I told the landowners not to do anything as the police would surely arrest them if they do. I told them to do it by legal way. But somehow the records were all changed to the extent the natives found out the land was not theirs. We did not proceed with the case because I, my election candidates and the Tuai Rumah (village headman) would be charged,” she recalled.
