January 23, 2010 by admin
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Written by Our Correspondent
A female blogger by the name of “sassyjan” had blogged about her
personal experience dealing with loansharks and the lukewarm
response she received from the Singapore police when she contacted
them for assistance.
She and her mother had been harassed by loansharks since her
father passed away in October last year.
Three months after his demise, somebody called his handphone and
claimed that he owed them $6,000 and gave “sassyjan” 2 days to pay
up.
“sassyjan” tried calling the police for help, but apparently had
difficulties contacting the police officer in charge of her
case:
“For 2 days I called the Inspecting Officer in-charge – No
Answer. I called the police again and reported the incident and the
exchange. A guy from Jurong HQ called me to say the IO in charge
will contact us. I waited up the whole night for someone to come or
call me – Nothing. For the 3rd time in 1 week, we dialed 999 in
desperation. I repeated everything… E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g from the
start to this ‘end’ in detail. What do we do now? what SHOULD we do
now?”
The police officer who answered her call promised to write the
report and forward it to the CID officer in charge of the case:
“His job is to write the report and forward this to the CID
Inspecting Officer. I called said IO again and the phone rung and
rung – Nothing. The police officer said he’ll try to help me call
this Inspecting Officer, but with the same helpless look, told me
he will try to email him too, however, sometimes it might take more
than a week to be answered. To know that internally, they can’t
even reach each other was… troubling.”
The loansharks had sprayed paint on the walls outside her home
and even tore down her front-door, but the police has done nothing
so far to help her family and the case remained unsolved.
“sassyjane” claimed that she had passed the two contact numbers
of the loansharks to the police:
“The police now have 2 handphone no. that the loansharks had
used to call us. We have spoken to them on both occassions proving
the no. actually works. Have anything been done with these leads
yet?”
Out of utter desperation and helplessness, “sassyjane” wrote
towards the end of her blog post that she is fast losing faith in
the Singapore police:
“But as the attack gets closer and fiercer, I find my faith
slowly dwindling. Can the police protect my family? Or have I place
my faith in the wrong place? Can I count on the system to get to
the end of this matter & save us from this?”
“sassyjane” can only blame herself for being born a Singaporean.
If she is a foreigner living in Singapore, the Singapore police
will surely act in double-quick time to solve her case.
Last week, a PRC couple and three others “hijacked” a SBS bus
for 6 hours after a dispute with the bus captain. The police was
called to the scene but dared not arrest them under the new Public
Order Act and instead ended up “escorting” them down the bus to a
cab called by SBS to fetch them home completely free of charge.
Perhaps “sassyjane” would like to try her luck by putting up a
mainland Chinese accent when speaking to the Singapore police next
time.
Read more about sassyjan’s unhappy experience with the Singapore
police here