The Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the Little India Riot on Dec 8th last year grilled the 1 man most responsible for the police debacle on Tuesday - Tanglin Police Division Commander, Deputy Assistant Commissioner (DAC) Lu Yeow Lim. They did not hold back with a scathing criticism of his actions with Commission member, Tee Tua Ba, himself a former divisional commander and Commissioner of Police (CP) telling DAC Lu, 'You made the problem worse!' The New Paper (TNP)detailed much of the grilling with a 4 page report in yesterday's edition:
http://www.tnp.sg/content/little-india-riot-inquiry-grills-ground-commander
The 5 key points directed at DAC Lu and highlighted by TNP were:
1) He did not know what was happening
2) He didn't know how many men he had on the ground
3) He took no action
4) He held the ground at the wrong place
5) His explanation of being powerless to act wasn't acceptable.
Tanglin Police Division Commander, DAC Lu Yeow Lim leaving the Sub-Courts after his testimony before the COI (TNP photo)
1) His unawareness of the scope of the riot
Upon his arrival, he positioned himself at Hampshire Road X Race Course Road - a poor choice since he could not see the full incident, as his vision was blocked by busses and other Govt vehicles. He stood behind a shield and had around 10 men with him. He took over command from ASP Jonathan Tang, who had made the effort to walk around and gather information, yet DAC Lu made no effort to communicate with him to be de-briefed about the situation.
ASP Jonathan Tang perform heroically unlike the Tanglin Commander (TNP photo)
When asked why he failed to walk around, he replied that protocol prevented commanders from going into the heat of battle! I find this strange that a police commander should say this, 'Shouldn't he be leading from the front?' This is not a war zone with enemy snipers positioned to take out commanders. No one had a firearm. But let us accept this protocol at face value, as Commission chairman, Justice GP Selvam pointed out, 'No one asked you to go to the centre. You could have walked around the periphery . You stayed put and did not know what was happening and did not bother to find out'
2) He did not know his strength.
This was perhaps the most shocking revelation of all - a most basic duty of any commander in whatever uniform group - to establish how many men you have available.
A policewoman manning the Combined Ops Room or 999 line. Granted it was busy during the riot with numerous calls, DAC Lu should have found other means to communicate with the men on the ground.
His explanation was that communication lines were down and he was unable to contact Combined Ops Room (COR), or in layman's terms - 999 Police Radio Division. In actual fact they were 110 officers at the scene, but DAC Lu said he believed he only had 10 armed officers. When questioned by CP Tee on whose fault it was - his or the system's? DAC Lu evaded answering by saying he was not in a position to make that judgment. There you have it folks - a classic act of refusing to take responsibility.
In fact COR had despatched 53 mobile resources to the scene before SOC and Gurkha Contigent's deployment. If DAC Lu did not know his manpower and refused to walk around, he should have done 1 of 4 things:
a) Direct 1 or 2 of his officers to walk around to find out
b) Gone to a better or higher ground to get a clearer picture. There are around 4-5 HDB blocks at Farrer Park overlooking the riot scene, that would have been a better vantage point. From there he could see the unfolding events away from harm's way and know exactly where the resources were.
c) If communication lines with COR were down, he could have instead liaised with his own divisional ops room (DOR) and got them to brief him on what they knew and how many men had been sent. Police lines may have been down but telephone lines were working normally, he could have gotten DOR to get the other officers on the ground especially ASP Tang to call him or vice-versa.
d) He himself could have retreated back to DOR a mere 500m away, where he could monitor the resources and direct the resources. He would have gotten a clearer picture. If he did not want to leave the scene, surely he had many other senior officers to delegate the duty to - his Head Investigations, Head Ops, Head Manpower, OC Patrol, OC NPCs and dozens other senior officers of and above the rank of Inspector to take charge of DOR and form a direct line of communication between them and him via his mobile phone.
SCDF officers battle a fire. They are truly 1 of the best in Asia and of a very high standard. Their incident commanders do not stand idly by, like DAC Lu.
The bottom line, whichever way you look at it, be it in the military or SCDF, is know how many men you have. No ground fire commander would simply tell his men to all go and attack a fire just like that, he would assign each a role and acting in cohesion they would go about their duties. No platoon commander will not assess his strength before he engages an enemy. DAC Lu is not some new recruit out of the academy, he must have known that in a situation like this, there would be no way that COR or DOR would only send 10 men to ground. There had to be at least dozens more, surely his primary task would have been to verify their position and to report their observations for him to make a decision.
Standing like a dead duck behind a shield, what purpose was it serving? No command post or position was established where reports could be converged in 1 spot, so that responsive action could be taken.
3) His failure to act.
He stood there for 30 mins and took no action. Worse still he prevented his officers from trying to do something, either to arrest a rioter or prevent damage.
Former Commissioner Tee Tua Ba pulled no punches, saying to DAC Lu 'You made the problem, worse!'
He gave the order to hold the ground until SOC's arrival. He said his objective was prevent the riot from escalating! Well we've got news for you DAC Lu, the riot did escalate and as the commission members pointed out, it was because no police officer was taking any form of action to stop them. This emboldened them. And there's no running away from this fact, when CP Tee an officer who witnessed the last riot in the 60s said, 'Look at the perspective of the rioters, with each police car overturned, you are not moving, the impression you are giving is that you are not going to do anything.''Are you really minimising or escalating the situation?''You have made the problem worse!'
4) He held the ground at the wrong place.
The main rioting was near Race Course Road X Kerbau Road, yet DAC Lu held the ground at Hampshire Road where only 1 police car was flipped.
When questioned by Justice Selvam as to whether as the ground commander (whose duty it was to observe where the real action was) he did that, he mumbled a 'no'. He then gave a strange reply, saying, 'It was unsound of me to turn my back against rioters, Do not take your eyes of the enemy!!' Perhaps this comes from the saying 'If looks could kill!'
5) His incapacity and failure to act was unacceptable'
CP Tee pointed out that the first SOC troop commanded by DSP Lim Sin Bin were able to walk through the rioters to DAC Lu's position, and a Traffic Police Officer who charged at a group of rioters with just his baton had gotten them to retreat, yet DAC Lu made no such move in the hour he was there.
Retired Justice G P Selvam was described as a sharp legal mind by lawyers. He's handling the COI well by trying to get to the bottom of things.
This followed a testy exchange which Justice Selvam declared, 'we do not accept that you could do nothing' followed by CP Tee saying, "You read the crowd wrongly'.
Unbelievably DAC Lu replied, 'I did not have the benefit of hindsight. I read the crowd based on what I saw, everything I saw suggested that the crowd would retaliate. If the intention was to quell the riot and bring justice, to be as brave as that single officer, what would be the point? He did not make any arrests.'
CP Tee rightly pointed out, 'It would show the police are taking active control. The TP Sgt said you do not need hundreds to disperse a crowd of hundreds.' Justice Selvam added, 'His assessment is very different from the imagination you're putting across.' Mr Tee also pointed out to DAC Lu, 'Some of the things that happened, you conveniently say you don't know, but what action have you taken about it?'
Can you imagine the calibre of senior commanders we have today, who instead of accepting responsibility and taking charge, instead use the excuse of hindsight to counter any criticism of their actions? DAC Lu, we are not talking about hindsight, we are talking about foresight! Every police officer, senior or junior must have foresight before and during any incident. Even in a simple accident, they must have the foresight to know what to do, how to assist the ambulance officers, how to cordon the scene and direct traffic and call for back up. Yet in a major case, you lack the foresight and vision to do something. Worse still you do nothing and prevent your officers from acting by saying what's the point? Imagine a fire commander at a scene of a raging fire, saying, 'No point, the fire too strong, let those trapped inside die or the whole unit be razed to the ground!'
The appointments of Commanders like DAC Lu and their failure reflects the failure of their boss - CP Ng Joo Hee.
The bottom-line is that he has no experience on the ground and refused to consider the advice of his junior men by giving them the support. 39 police and SCDF personnel were injured and you did nothing? Little India was a powder keg and throughout his command he did not do anything about it. No attempts were made to control traffic or the crowd. He had no situational awareness, no foresight and worse of all not 1 word of an apology for his failure. Instead he has a litany of excuses at the ready. This whole episode has shown 1 thing - his position is untenable and the same should be said of his fellow commanders, all of whom have been parachuted into such positions by a series of repeated promotions simply because they are scholars. His failure is a reflection amongst other things the failure of the Commisioner Ng Joo Hee to lead and supervise his commanders. He should be demoted or given the option to leave the force. We certainly do not need this kind of weak, buck pushing officers leading the various divisions. To put it bluntly as the title suggests - DAC Lu Yeow Lim - You suck!
Finally I want to touch on 1 issue that's also arisen from the after-math of the riot - the issue of criticising the police. Some have suggested that such criticism is unfair and typical of arm-chair critics like myself. Take popular blogger Chua Chin Leng aka Redbean with this post in his blog - 'My Singapore News':
http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.sg/2014/03/the-revelations-of-little-india-riot.html
He lambasts armchair critics, saying the police did better in not resorting to serious action and had they done so, we could have seen some of them in body bags. He says it's easy to criticise when we were not there and like others, questions what would we have done? What he's fail to point out is that the COI has repeatedly criticised the conduct of the police on the day. And he's obviously failed to notice that 39 officers were injured. This defies the most basic instinct that every police officer must subscribe to when going out for their daily duties - you go to your duties in 1 piece or form, make sure you return in the same manner. Something seriously went wrong when some of them had to go the hospital. Something seriously went wrong went SCDF officers were not given the protection and they too had to go to hospital.
We have also seen on social media comments made by some police officers and certain pro-Govt pages, that it's unfair or improper for the public to be laying into the police over their actions in the riot. Worse, some have suggested that if we are so smart and clever in our criticisms, we should put on the uniform and go handle these kind of cases and see how we perform!
Blogger Chua Chin Leng criticises armchair critics for lambasting the police. But he himself doesn't know or appreciate what happened on Dec 8th, so who's he to make such a judgment?
This is totally out of order. Firstly, the police are public servants, they answer to the public, the public must have every right to question and even condemn them over their failures and inaction. In his testimony before the COI, DC Rajakumar said that the police had to before using their firearms, be sure it was proper and whether they could justify to the public, such use. So there can be no doubt that upper police management know that they are answerable to the public. It thus must follow that the public has a right to question them. So people like Redbean, junior police officers who come online and their supporters, can go fly a kite if they think the public cannot question them.
DC T Rajakumar addressing reporters. He acknowledged that the police answers to the public, so it must follow that the public has every right to question and condemn the police when something goes wrong.
I will go further, it's because people like me and others, including former police officers have undergone such duties, that we are criticising them, not merely as armchair critics, but as one who have undergone the same set of duties. It baffles us that the management could allow such a situation to deteriorate so rapidly with no action taken. It also baffles us as to why over many months and years, nothing was done to anticipate or prepare for such an incident.
Finally about the suggestion of the questioning public donning the uniform, this is again unacceptable. To such officers with this mindset -let me say this this, you're not indispensable, never think that we are dependant solely on you, or that without you, the SPF will crumble and Singapore would be a lawless state. You were hired to filled a position. If you didn't join, if you quit, even die tomorrow, somebody else would be hired to replace you. You filled a quota with your appointment. If you feel that such criticism is unjust or unfair and you don't like it, please quit immediately. So we can hire someone else who's prepared to do his or her duty without feeling that the public is obligated to them. You were hired to serve the public, you were trained and paid a good salary, if you are no longer prepared to accept these terms, please resign and let someone else who is, do the job for us. Maybe even with such positions becoming vacant, some of us 'so-called armchair critics' can be given the chance to the job.
Sir Nelspruit
*The author blogs at anyhowhantam.blogspot.com
Editor's Note: Interestingly, SPH did a story on DAC Lu Yeow Lim 2 years ago about him being a Bullied kid that grows up to be a "top" cop.
What do you think?