Residents have had to give up certain freedoms because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Before we entered Phase 2, leaving your house without a “reasonable excuse” could land you in jail, a law that would have been inconceivable before the coronavirus outbreak.
Thankfully, the country has finally moved to the second phase of its safe reopening, where social visits are allowed and you can leave your house as you please.
What hasn’t changed, though, is that some people are still being uncooperative with the authorities for the most trivial of reasons.
Man Tried to Online Shame Police Officers Doing Their Job; Even Rudely Taunted Officers
A video of a man taunting police officers has been making the rounds on social media after it was posted on the Facebook page ROADS.sg.
The man seems to be upset that the police stopped him to do a spot check when he was on his way home.
At the start of the video, the man keeps saying that he’s a “citizen” and a “resident” of the country, and pans to all the officers who are standing around him.
Thank goodness he didn’t call himself a “sovereign”. The country can only handle one sovereign at a time.
When one officer signals to another to search the man, the man’s anger swells and he taunts one of the officers by holding his bag out and saying “search lah” over and over again.
“I go home also you want to stop me like that”, the man says.
A female officer then politely asks him to place his bag and phone down on the police car’s boot so they can search him, but he refused to put his phone down, presumably because he wants to film the entire process.
The man asks what he’s done to warrant a search, to which the officer replies: “We have every right to make a check on you”.
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What’s most infuriating about this man’s behaviour is that when the female officer asks him to stand against the police car so they can search him, he asks her if she wants him to take his pants off for the search.
Another male officer then begins searching the man.
“I no gun lah bro”, he says to the officer.
The man complains again about the fact that they stopped him when he was on his way home.
The video ends with the female officer searching his bag.
So, do the police have a right to conduct random searches on people on the streets? In a word, yes.
Essential Part of Policing
According to an information booklet on police procedures, spot-checks are an “essential part of the day-to-day policing”.
Spot checks are carried out to “increase police presence, check suspicious persons, gather ground information, investigate offences, and deter and detect crime”, the booklet said.
All you have to do during a spot-check is provide your particulars, answer their questions, and allow them to check your belongings.
Once the police have determined that everything is in order, you’ll be allowed to go about your day again.
What you shouldn’t do, is to try and shame police officers online for doing their job, or taunt them while they’re asking you questions.
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