Keystone cops
On a sultry morning last month our Macau apartment was burgled. It was bad enough to lose a laptop computer, mobile phone and handbag. But making it worse was the bureaucracy we had to go through only to obtain a police receipt, so we could make a claim for the lost items with the insurance company.
We called the emergency number, 999, and some plain-clothes police officers came and photographed the scene. They took the testimony of my flatmate, who gave them my phone number because I was absent from the house at the time. They promised to call soon to take my testimony. Then they left, leaving no receipt, no business card, no way of contacting them.
When no phone call came for a week, I telephoned the security police, hoping to offer my testimony. There are two police forces in Macau, the security and judiciary police, and they sometimes have overlapping powers.
The security police handle cases reported through the 999 emergency calls. But they referred me to the judiciary police, which handles all burglary cases - or so I was told. The judiciary police, however, said that since the plain-clothes officers did not take fingerprints at the scene, they could not be from the judiciary police force. Yet, the security police said any plain-clothes officers must belong to the judiciary police.
'It is common to wait three or four weeks while [either force] investigates a case,' said an officer of the judiciary police. 'Why don't you just wait patiently for a call from a police officer?'
Three weeks went by and we called the judiciary police again. Finally, we were told that in order to obtain a police report, we needed to go in person to the judiciary police headquarters.
It turned out that we could also inquire into the status of the case, free of charge. We would receive a reply within two business days, saying it was either under investigation or transferred to the prosecutor's office. It took us three weeks of persistent phone calls before a police officer had bothered to tell us about this service.
Of course, a petty burglary at a small flat is not a high priority for any police force. Six years since the handover, the Macau police have been credited with reducing the crime rate. But the bureaucratic backbone of the security forces has remained in place. For instance, any complaint filed against a police officer is filed at the police headquarters and reviewed by the chief of police. There is no independent commission to investigate the matter.
Meanwhile, we make sure we keep our balcony door locked. That's to prevent another burglary - and having to deal with unhelpful police departments, ever again.
