Nothing seems to get the public riled up faster than cases of police injustice. Take this Facebook post, which was posted less than 24 hours ago but has already been shared over 43 thousand times:
The poster, Wisnuhandy Widyoastono, wrote about how he was the victim of a police beating in Ciputat, South Tangerang, yesterday. It began when he was driving his motorcycle and got stuck in a traffic jam at a busy intersection. He claims that an officer told him to pull over for a license and registration inspection.
Seeing that there were no signs on the road about a police inspection (which is required by law), Wisnuhandy asked the officer if he could see an inspection warrant. The officer apparently didn’t take Wisnuhandy’s request kindly and began yelling at him and took him to see a senior officer.
Wisnuhandy kept asking to see an inspection warrant (he wrote that he asked for it calmly), and soon other officers came over. According to his account, that is when 3 officers began hitting him. Luckily, Wisnuhandy still had his helmet on.
This happened right in front of the senior officer, who broke up the alleged beating after Wisnuhandy was apparently cornered. Wisnuhandy then took out his phone to take photos of the culprits, but they covered up their name tags and the senior officer refused to give up their names.
The senior officer then took Wisnuhandy aside, and, in what seems like an apologetic gesture, offered Wisnuhandy a cup of coffee. But Wisnuhandy refused and said he would report the incident, after which he was let go.
This doesn’t seem to be an elaborate social media hoax and the police seem to be taking the matter seriously, as the National Police have confirmed that the officers are now being investigated by Jakarta Metro Police’s Internal Affairs Division.
“The officers can be charged with ethical misconduct,” said National Police Spokesman Brigadier General Boy Rafli, as quoted by Detik today.
Boy added that Internal Affairs would look into the possibilities that the officers carried out other forms of misconduct, such as accepting bribes. He urged citizens to take down officers’ names suspected of behavioral misconduct and report them to the police should something similar happen to them.
