A viral video showing police in Grogol Petamburan, West Jakarta, storming a mansion and firing shots into the air they thought was being ransacked by robbers once again highlights the thin line between criminals and legally sanctioned debt collectors in Indonesia.
The incident occurred on Tuesday morning in Grogol’s Jelambar Indah Park neighborhood. Police were alerted to numerous suspicious people parking motorcycles outside and entering a mansion in the upscale neighborhood.
“It happened on Tuesday. In the morning there were only six people, but soon there were more than 20,” said Samsudin, a security officer working in the area, when interviewed by Detik yesterday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GepccMYMp7o
Around noon, police arrived on the scene. As seen in the video, police fired bullets into the air to try and gain control of the situation. Samsudin said several shots were fired.
Police managed to eventually secure the men and bring them to the local station. After questioning, police eventually allowed the men to go since they decided it was not a robbery but a legitimate act of debt collection.
“It was a misunderstanding, we just secured them to avoid more premanism (thuggery),” said West Jakarta Police Criminal Investigator Edi Sitepu.
Police did not give more details about the debt collectors, who they were working for or how the police could have mistaken them for robbers.
But as their statement alludes to, preman (thugs) are often hired to act as debt collectors in Indonesia and are often given wide leeway to use thuggish tactics to recover debts for their employers. And it’s not just small time loan sharks – even large international banks in Indonesia have been accused of hiring dangerous preman to collect their debts.
Earlier this year before he was inaugurated, Vice Governor Sandiaga Uno suggested that Jakarta’s preman problem could be solved by hiring even more of them as debt collectors.
