WHERE CAN I BUY A GUN, PLEASE?

I'm dead serious. Illegally? I don't care. My acquaintance who is a Datuk carries one. Why shouldn't I have one? What makes HIS family special enough to protect and not mine??

This shortage of manpower problem in our forces has been festering for years, and not much has been done about it.

Low morale
Lack of professionalism
Low pay (maybe we can reroute ministers' holidays allowances and perks here?)
Bribery
Poor training
Lack of presence/visibility

Are just some of the other problems plaguing our forces. My beloved grandfather was a proud, heroic and dedicated policeman. He would have been saddened to see the state of our forces today.

Listening to horror stories about Mat Rempits over the radio this morning, raping, running over, killing and robbing people, I recall how they once terrorised Wangsa Maju neighborhoods, locking in occupants with their own chains and padlocks and smashing car windows and stealing stuff unhindered, as people were too terrified to do anything.

Deaths from snatch thefts continue to rise, kids' murders go unsolved, break-ins and horrific murders like the recent one in Shah Alam continue unabated.

Even my gated estate is not spared (yeah, I did my time in the usual dingy and leaky roofed, clapboard houses, ok?). My neighbour woke up to a knife at his throat, and both he and his wife were tied up and robbed. The Indon robbers even had the gall to ask for his daughter, who mercifully was spared by not coming home from college that weekend. They have never been found, even though the couple knew they were the same ones who renovated their house.

I formed a residents' association after that incident. The residents here are so kiasu they wouldn't even know if their neighbor died and decomposed. We urged residents to look out for each other. (some are idiots who still do not bother to learn their neighbor's names). We requested the cops to do intermittent patrols and guess what... "we were advised to make a small donation first". Bribe cops to do their jobs, eh?

Reading Musa Hassan's statement below adds to my concern for my kids' safety. Yes. I read all the necessary ayat, lock up the house and etc, but if the criminals are having a free reign nationwide and the cops are admitting their are severely understaffed, and crime is a daily affair in Wangsa Maju...wouldn't that give one sleepless nights? Should we blindly tawakkal before preparing ourselves?

With the cops literally peeing in their underwear from fear in Chow Kit and abandoning stations, does that make me feel like I could count on them?

And with Azeez the idiot giving recognition to the Rempits, they certainly have been emboldened further.

Is this the price of so-called progress?

Do our politicians even give a hoot about our woes? Or are they so well-protected by their posse of public-funded bodyguards and their gilded cages that they don't even know what reality is anymore?

HAS ANYTHING CHANGED AFTER MARCH 2008???? ARE THE PEOPLE STILL A PRIORITY?

NO. THEIR POLITICAL SURVIVAL IS.

I NEED A GUN TO PROTECT MY FAMILY.

DON'T TELL ME THAT'S ILLEGAL. THE STATE HAS FAILED IN ITS DUTY TO PROVIDE A REASONABLY SAFE AND SECURE ENVIRONMENT AND I HAVE MY KIDS TO THINK OF. OK?

I want a fighting chance to press the cold steel of a Widowmaker into the throat of an intruder before he has a chance to press the cold. sharp blade of a knife into mine.

From The Star: Police Short of Manpower to Fight Crime

Today (Nov 10, 2008)

THE country’s population increased by a whopping seven million the past 10 years while the strength of the Royal Malaysian Police Force remained the same at 95,000. Efforts are under way to recruit another 60,000 personnel over the next five years.

Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan, who admitted that the crime rate has gone up, assured the public that the security of the country was very much under control.

Police records show that 209,559 cases were reported last year (772 cases per 100,000 population) and the figure is expected to remain almost the same this year.

“The crime rate has increased here because of social problems as well as the influx of illegals in the country,” Musa said, adding that the crime rate often increased during an economic slowdown.

“This is due to the fact that many people would be jobless and they turn to crime,” he said.

The IGP stressed that one of the main reasons for the rise in crime was the change in attitudes of youths who do not respect the elders to the extent of fighting with their parents, relatives and even more recently with teachers.

Over the past few months, newspapers have been highlighting gangsterism in schools while racial incidents are on the rise.

Musa has often stressed the need to rehabilitate society rather than focus on catching criminals and locking them up.

“It is society that breeds criminals, not the police,” he said.