The police motto used to be to protect and serve and although that was more said than done, more words than action – especially where the serve part is concerned – especially when you went to make a report and the attending officer(s) treated you as the criminal and not the victim.
Nonetheless, citizens still regarded the service from the perspective of the meaning of the motto and optimistically called them and called upon them when they had an emergency.
Those were the days, long ago and far away, when Rohan Sinanan was nothing and nobody, when he had no power to transform the police from being good or potentially good to just the bad and the ugly; to now being seen when they are seen as representative of a new motto: “To terrorise and ticket”. Yes, roadblocks not so long ago suggested that the police were on the stakeout for some real criminal on the run or for arms and ammunitions stashed away in some car trunk; and you know what, most citizens felt that was what the police needed to do to solve the crime situation. Now you wonder if you pressed the horn and it doesn’t blow, you’ll get a ticket. So horn is now a desired objective, eh.
Thus, since Rohan arose from Hitler’s Gestapo, and handed the police the ticket book (his textbook of economics) as a substitute for policing and make ordinary persons trying their best to make a decent living a target for some nit picking infraction – a broken taillight, for example, – police are now seen as the enemy, not the criminal. As a guide to the police service, as a manual on how to serve and that you are not puppets, conduct this ticketing exercise you have been empowered to undertake with a measure of restraint, with the understanding that it was not designed for catching criminals but for raising revenue for the government which has obliterated the treasury and now targets the pockets of citizens as a means of making up for its fiscal profligacy and incompetence.
So members of the police service, try and get back in the good books of we the people and stop feeling that what Rohan says is for the betterment of the country. His objective is to ensure the blossoming of the balisier flower and make all citizens – police and civilians – live in a dog eat dog world. Understand this.
By Lester Siddhartha Orie