it's summons time!

A few months ago, during the hari raya season, my mil was feeling rather thirsty, and badly needed something to drink. So my bil stopped the car at the side of the road and went to the 7-11 nearby to get her something to drink. A cisco officer came along, saw the car, and promptly went ahead to make a summons, totally ignoring my mil in the car who was desperately trying to catch his attention by calling out to him and waving her hands at him. Now we have no qualms with the fine – we did something wrong (parking at a double yellow line, even if for a really short time for a perfectly good reason with a person still in the car, is definitely WRONG) so we ought to be fined for that, but what really pissed us off was the attitude and behaviour of the officer. He was clearly bent on making the summons, and was so ‘intent’ on his job that even the cries of a helpless old lady in the car would not move him. What if my mil was crying to him for help?? Would he have helped her, or would he ignore her as he did then? My bet is on the latter.

This morning, we decided to have our breakfast at the cheese prata shop, beside fong seng. There were many cars parked along the road, though there were jagged yellow lines, but that’s ok (or so we thought) cos apart from the cars parked there and the occasional traffic, the road’s close to empty. What do you know, a few minutes into our breakfast, our friendly cicso guy comes along in his trusty scooter to give summons to all and sundry. It was irritating. Damm irritating. Yes technically the cars weren’t supposed to be parked there, but were they obstructing traffic? What traffic?? It was a lazy Friday morning, a public holiday morning, and there was definitely no heavy traffic. You know…once upon a time there used to be this little thing called “give and take”, but this is non-existent in the vocabulary of those cisco guys. To them, the more summons they make, the better. Probably cos they’re paid according to the number of summonses they make. And so I’m bloody pissed.

And what about the incident a few days ago of the guy who were harassed by 2 cisco officers which was reported in the papers? Apparently the guy caught the officers parking their vehicle illegally, and so proceeded to take a picture of the offending vehicle with his camera. What do you know, the 2 officers then confronted him and insisted that he delete the photo. The guy refused though, cos he insisted that it was within his right to take photos in a public area, and he stood his ground (yeyy for him!). the cicso guys kept harassing him, and threatened to call the police. In fact, both parties threatened to call the police (again, yeyy for the guy!!), and so the police were called in. to cut the story short, the police ruled that the guy did nothing wrong by taking the picture as it’s in a public place, but that the cisco guys did nothing wrong either for parking the vehicle illegally cos they were allowed to do that in the course of their work.

My beef is this: why did the cisco guys act in such a high-handed manner, insisting that the photo be deleted?? They knew they did nothing wrong by parking their vehicle where they did, so why should they harass the guy? My only conclusion: they did that because they thought they could. They thought wearing the uniform gives them the power to incite fear in others. If I were in the guy’s shoes, my guess is I would prolly meekly heed the officers’ requests, thinking that I’d done something wrong. Or even if I thought I did nothing wrong, I would still accede to the officers’ demands cos I just wont want to aggravate matters. So I’m mighty proud of that guy who bravely stood his ground. We need more of him around so that the powers that be, real or otherwise, would not indiscriminately inflict their powers on us. So yes…YEYYYY for him!!