From NZ Herald
New Zealand police plan to recruit staff from Singapore to overcome a shortage in the force and help Labour to fulfill its election deal with NZ First to appoint 1000 new officers.
What??? I thought 1st of April was already a few weeks behind?
Singapore might have the reputation as one of the safest country (city?) in the world, but it's not because of the police officers. It's Singapore government (read: LKY) managed to instill fear into its people, similar to the way Indonesian feared Suharto in his good days.
This idea is not going to work if NZ decides to put these police officers on the street. There's no fear factor here. Local criminals here are much bigger in posture than most Asian. If you're bigger, and you are threatened by someone smaller than you, you tend to have more guts and fight back. In short, the bad guys won't be afraid of these police officers. In addition to that, in Singapore the patrolling police officers carry guns with them, while here in NZ they only carry handcuffs and tie wraps, so in order for this to work, NZ police needs to recruit only those with martial art skills close to Jet Li.
The other reasons that NZ police cited was that they needed to learn Asian culture and someone who can speak Chinese as the Chinese population has grown quickly (especially in Auckland area)
Singaporean police officers will also have the language and cultural understanding capabilities to help improve our Asian responsiveness.
The question is, does the NZ police (and its officers) really want to learn Chinese culture? If it does, then it doesn't have to hire someone from Singapore. It's a matter of keeping open mind , learning the language, and some good readings (I'd recommend reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, where he gave one example of Amadou Diallo who was shot by police officers in US as an inevitable byproduct of racism) When multiculturalism is not encouraged and recognized inside the organization itself, this extra Singapore officers won't be their magic bullet.
Come to think of it, it is not practical too to expect special arm of police to handle specific segment of the society. You don't want this to happen:
Patrolling Police: we got the suspects
HQ: good stuff, where are they now?
Patrolling Police: they're in the car in front of us.
Patrolling Police: err.. bugger, they're Chinese, HELP HELP
HQ: this is a job for Singapore police (theme song here)
Anyway, it will be interesting to see how it will work out...
Posts
|