TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - After being officially inaugurated as Chief of the Indonesian National Police, Tito Karnavian must immediately fulfil his promise to finish police reforms.
President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo has also instructed that the reforms be done comprehensively and in concrete ways so that the police could be optimal in serving and protecting the people.
President Jokowi also demanded that the system of police recruitment be improved.
In matters that directly deal with the people, the President has instructed that public services that are complex be cut and free from illegal levies.
He is also expected to address other pressing matters such as law enforcement that are not professionally done yet and legal mafia.
In the past few years, a number of surveys show that the satisfaction level of the public to the police is low.
The people consider that the police are one of the most corrupt institutions.
When he was still Chief of the Jakarta Regional Police, Tito admitted that the people’s trust the police dropped and the causes were, as he admitted, from the complex procedure to obtain driving licenses to the handling of selected cases.
Now that he is the Chief of the National Police, the reforms must begin with Tito himself.
Tito, who graduated form the Police Academy in 1987, must become a role model for his subordinates in eradicating corruption, collusion and nepotism within the police.
For example, Tito must distance himself form shady businessmen and politicians who often collude with the police.
Tito should also open the door for the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to take part in reforming the police.
Tito must not hide himself from the statement ‘give the police a change to improve themselves so not to be resistant’
In the case with Djoko Susilo and Budi Gunawan, instead of cooperating, the police retaliated.
After the hullabaloo died down, the police now has the obligation to submit four members of the Car Brigade who guard Secretary of the Supreme Court Nurhadi, who always avoid the summons from the KPK.
Those four are the key witness in the meeting of Nurhadi with troubled businessmen.
The police must not give the impression that they always protect his personnel who are dealing with the KPK.
Another job that awaits Tito is to change his leadership style that tends to be repressive.
Commission for the Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) reported that Tito is ‘allergic’ to the freedom to express opinions when he was Chief of Papua Regional Police and Chief of Jakarta Regional Police.
In Papua, Tito often arrested West Papua pro-independence activists while in Jakarta, he arrested 26 labor activist that protested against the Government Regulation on Wages in October 2015.
Those 29 people were later named as suspects.
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