Despite only being officially released in Indonesia last week, Pokemon GO fever has arguably died down here because people have been downloading it through unofficial channels and playing it for over a month already. As such, much of anti-Pokemon GO sentiments have also been forgotten (which ranged from religious bans to downright nutty conspiracy theories).
However, one concern that is still applicable is that players could wander into secure government facilities in search for Pokestops, which are checkpoints in the game based on real locations. One such facility, which contains many Pokestops, is the Jakarta Metro Police’s headquarters.
“There are many Pokestops in the headquarters, like in front of the SDM department, in front of Special Crimes, mosque, helipad, traffic police, the TMC park. This is not right, there are many secrets here,” said Jakarta Metro Police Spokesman Grand Commissioner Awi Setiyono, as quoted by Tempo yesterday.
In addition to warning anyone who wanders into the headquarters in search of Pokemon and Pokestops, Awi said that the Jakarta Metro Police, through the Information and Communications Ministry, would tackle the problem right at the source by filing an official complaint to Google and Niantic, the companies behind Pokemon GO, and get them to erase the Pokestops in the police headquarters.
“We can’t let it get to the point of people sneaking in here. We fear that [any classified information taken from headquarters] could be used by irresponsible parties,” Awi said.
To be fair, there are some grounds for the police’s concerns about trespassing, considering that a Frenchman was detained last month for trespassing on a military base in Cirebon while playing Pokemon GO.
