UN called in to help fix Thai police

Specialists to draw up roadmap for reform

BHANRAVEE TANSUBHAPOL

The United Nations will send experts to Thailand to help the government reform the police force. Kittipong Kittiyarak, secretary-general of the committee on police reform, said the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) will send four specialists to Thailand to conduct a workshop and seminar on police reform in March.

The two sides met on Saturday when UNODC's deputy executive director Dimitri Vlassis and criminal justice reform unit head Mark Shaw were in Thailand en route to India and Cambodia.

Mr Shaw is a former police officer who has helped develop a police reform blueprint in South Africa.

Jaran Pakditanakul, permanent secretary for justice, was also at the meeting.

Mr Kittipong, also deputy permanent secretary for justice, said the UN approach was no different than Thailand's. Both favour involving the public in police restructuring, decentralising the force and ensuring police work more closely with the public, he said.

The UN experts coming in March specialise in establishing roadmaps for police reform, Mr Kittipong said. This involves outlining the process of decentralisation, setting up a police board and forming an independent committee to receive complaints from the public, he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Kittipong plans next week to distribute to the public tens of thousands of handbooks on police reform to make known what the committee is doing and the benefits that will result.

''After distributing the handbooks, the police will understand that reform is not intended to destroy the former structure under deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra,'' he said.

On the contrary, police will be politically neutral and need not fear influential persons, Mr Kittipong said. The transfer process will be fairer and unnecessary work will be delegated to community personnel, he said.

Police will also get better funding, which will improve work efficiency, he added.

There is no proposal to close the police cadet school, Mr Kittipong said. But the school should be run as a Special Delivery Unit with experts to train police in skills related to their profession, he said.

At a seminar on Jan 19, Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont pledged to begin the process of police reform during the year-long term of his interim government.

He emphasised the importance of public participation in the process and said the government wanted to enhance public trust in the police.

Advocates of decentralisation say the 270,000-strong police force is too large to answer to only one commander.

Meanwhile, the Police Cadet Academy will open a master's degree course for the first time since it was established in 1902.

Pol Lt-Gen Pongsaphat Pongchareon, academy director, said the academy has joined hands with the US-based Sam Houston State University to offer the two-year course in criminal justice.

The course will be conducted in English at the academy in Nakhon Pathom's Sam Phran district.

Bangkok Post
Wednesday January 31, 2007