With body-worn cameras, police shootings can be more easily probed

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With the Malaysian police now wearing body-worn cameras, it is possible to finally analyse and verify whether the oral narrative of the police officers involved in attempted arrests that end up with the killings of alleged suspects are true or otherwise.

Body-worn cameras have been supplied to officers in the Klang Valley since June 2024.

The Bukit Aman Crime Prevention and Community Safety Department director [Commissioner Wan Hassan Wan Ahmad] said the use of the BWC [body-worn cameras] will also improve the police force’s image, as BWC records could be used as evidence in any criminal case, including cases of personnel and officers who were slandered while enforcing the law.

The evidence from body-worn cameras and police vehicle dashcams will certainly be useful in determining the criminal liability of police officers in incidents where individuals are shot dead instead of being arrested in a police operation.

It was reported on 18 January that in yet another police encounter near Rawang, all three suspects were shot dead.

When a person is killed instead of being arrested or while in custody, he or she is a victim of gross injustice, as this presumed innocent person has been deprived the right to a fair trial, which may have found him or her innocent.

More so, when they are shot dead in the process of arrest, the question arises whether any of those who were killed when sharing the car with some criminal suspects were totally innocent. Who exactly did the police want to arrest?

Federal Criminal Investigation Department director Datuk Seri Mohd Shuhaily Mohd Zain said the incident happened around noon.

“The suspects are believed to have rented cars and changed their number plates to search for four-wheel drive vehicles to steal….

He added: “Police officers tried to stop them and introduce themselves, but the suspects opened fire.

“A chase followed for about 750m from a housing area in Kota Emerald. The suspects and police then exchanged fire.”

He said the three suspects were shot dead in the incident.

From the news report, it seems the police did not even manage to identify themselves as police officers.

Will the coroner come to the same conclusion that the police officers were not criminally liable for the killing of the three?

Coroner finds police liable for killing

When all suspects are shot dead, there is no way for any of the alleged suspects to contradict the police version of what exactly transpired, and that is why body-worn cameras and vehicle dashcams provide very important evidence to determine the truth.

We recall that on 31 May 2022 a coroner’s court, presided by Coroner Rasyihah Ghazali, that inquired into a police shooting concluded that there was abuse of power and elements of a criminal nature in the death of three men who were shot at close range by police three years ago.

READ MORE:  Reformasi polis segera diperlukan: IPCMC tidak boleh ditangguh lagi

“The shots were not fired in self-defence. There was abuse of power and (actions in the nature of) criminal elements by police in the death of the men.”

This means that in some cases, the police may be held criminally liable and ought to be prosecuted for their crimes that killed people.

Police cannot kill, they can only arrest – that is the law

Now, it is the Malaysian law, that the police cannot kill suspects.

Section 15 of the Criminal Procedure Code which deals with arrest and the use of reasonable force makes this most clear in Section 15(3) which states most clearly:

(3) Nothing in this section gives a right to cause the death of a person who is not accused of an offence punishable with death or with imprisonment for a term of not less than thirty years but not exceeding forty years or with imprisonment for life.’

These three were not even accused people, ie persons already charged in court who are free on bail. From the media reports, they are just alleged suspects of a crime.

That being the case, all the police officers involved should be promptly investigated and charged in court – and the court will determine whether any available defence like self-defence applies or not. These police officers may be guilty of murder, or even culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

End post-death defamation of victims of police shootings

In the statement on the recent killings, the police allege that two of the three suspects had police records for 68 offences, mostly related to vehicle theft and robbery.

If that is the case, then did the police ever, before these killings, call these suspects in for questioning at a police station in relation to these crimes.

Did the police send them a letter requiring their attendance at the police station for investigation? Was there any summons to compel them to attend? Any previous arrests? Any previous convictions in court?

Now, if there was none, then the police must really explain, and clear all doubts.

Nobody wants to believe that this police team went out after these suspects with the intention to kill not arrest. Nobody wants to believe these police officers chose to kill the other suspects after the police ‘accidentally’ or intentionally shot the first one dead to cover up the truth.

Were they killed to close investigations into crimes? Were they killed to protect ‘kingpins’ or others involved? Were they killed because the Malaysian police lack training to shoot and arrest?

The media report, sadly, does not reveal whether the police officers were in an unmarked police vehicle or a clearly marked police car? Neither is there information as to whether the police officers were in uniform or not, or even the number of police officers involved?

READ MORE:  Urgent need to criminalise extrajudicial killings

The statement by the federal Criminal Investigation Department director, hours after the ‘shoot-to-kill’ incident is questionable.

Did he speak too soon, before even doing the required investigation – thus ‘blindly’ relying on the oral statements (possibly unverified or corroborated) provided by the officers involved? Did the police investigate the crime scene, the bullet casings, the angle from which the shots were fired or even try to find other non-police witnesses?

Such premature statements are unbecoming of any senior police officer, who concludes as ‘truth’ even before a thorough investigation is done, and possibly simply to ‘protect’ his police officers.

In police shooting cases, it is best that it is not their immediate superiors or police officers in the same station or district or even state who should be investigating. It should best be some other independent police officers or bodies.

One safeguard that already exist in Malaysian law is the coroner, usually a magistrate or a Sessions Court judge, who is independent of the police. They, according to law, would investigate the deaths and specifically determine whether the police officers who killed individuals are criminally liable or not. It is crucial to note that in at least one such reported inquiry, the coroner found the police officers were criminally liable.

Sadly, the coroners’ reports of all these police shooting cases where people end up being killed are not actively made known to the public, maybe through the media or even placed on a website, where the public can have easy access.

Did the coroner also, after inquiries or inquests, find the police officers involved not criminally liable for causing the deaths of these alleged suspects? This is an important fact we need to know.

Abolish IPCC and restore IPCMC Bill

It is most disappointing that the prime minister or government or even the home minister, who is responsible for the police, seem to not take these fatal incidents of people being shot dead by the police seriously.

One body that could have been tasked with independent investigations of these case could have been the proposed truly “independent police complaints and misconduct commission” (IPCMC).

Sadly, when Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan led-government came into power, it chose to simply put into force on 1 July 2023 the Independent Police Conduct Commission Act 2022 (IPCC Act) – tabled by the preceding Perikatan Nasional-Barisan Nasional government after it had came into power following the ‘Sheraton move’ – rather than re-introducing the IPCMC Bill tabled earlier by the Pakatan Harapan government in July 2019. (A parliamentary select committee had amended the IPCMC Bill to restore most of the contents proposed by a royal commission of inquiry in 2005.)

READ MORE:  Urgent police reform needed: IPCMC can no longer wait

The IPCC sadly is nothing but a ‘sorting’ commission, and complaints about cases of individuals being shot dead by the police will simply be sent back to the police to investigate. This totally defeats the possibility of independent investigation and conclusion to deal with the problem.

The IPCC Act removed the police from the jurisdiction of the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC), enacted by the EAIC Act, by the BN regime then under Najib Razak, in response to calls for the IPCMC.

The IPCC Act has less power than the EAIC, which did publish several reports of their findings on custodial death cases, with recommendations for the officers involved to be prosecuted for their crimes. The IPCC does not even have this power.

Malaysians Against Death Penalty and Torture (Madpet) calls on the Malaysian government to repeal the IPCC Act and retable the IPCMC Bill. This will finally ensure an independent commission empowered with the power to investigate and better still prosecute police officers found to be criminally liable for fatalities from police shootings and other police crimes.

Over 50 people were shot dead annually…

The home ministry, in a parliamentary reply in 2012, said that a total of 298 people of various nationalities were shot dead between 2007 and August 2012.

A total of 279 suspects have been shot dead by the police between 2000 and 2009. This was revealed by the minister in Parliament in 2010 (Malaysiakini, 28 June 2010). Minister Hishammuddin Hussein also revealed that the police shot dead 82 suspects in 2008 and 88 in 2009.

How many extrajudicial killings since then?

Madpet calls for body-worn cameras and police vehicle dashcams for all police officers, especially for police teams tasked with arresting suspects (like the one that recently ended up shooting three suspects dead in Rawang) to be made a priority. The use of body-worn cameras and vehicle dashcams has been a norm in most jurisdictions for a long time, and Malaysia should expedite this for police and all other law enforcement personnel here.

Madpet calls for an end to the ‘defamation of the dead’ and urges for the focus of the investigation to be on the criminal liability of the police officers who ended up shooting suspects dead when they were supposed to be investigating them.

Madpet calls for the full and transparent disclosure of all coroners’ findings in cases of suspects being shot dead by the police.

Madpet calls for respect for the principle that a person is presumed innocent until convicted in court after a fair trial. Note that the sentence for these alleged car thieves is not death but imprisonment.

Charles Hector issued this statement on behalf of Malaysians Against Death Penalty and Torture.

The views expressed in Aliran's media statements and the NGO statements we have endorsed reflect Aliran's official stand. Views and opinions expressed in other pieces published here do not necessarily reflect Aliran's official position.
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