One year after the National Assembly limited the military police’s power to arrest civilians, crime in remote provinces has escalated and the gendarme has had a more difficult time cracking down on suspected criminals, top military officials said recently.
The Assembly’s decision to prohibit military police from detaining and arresting nonmilitary personnel, approved in November 2001, was part of a nationwide effort to streamline the country’s police forces and end conflicts between judicial police and the gendarme, officials said.
Yet the effect of that policy change has damaged the once-strong military police force and reduced it to a “supervisory role,” said co-Minister of Defense Prince Sisowath Sirirath.
“National security is a priority, and the police and the gendarme need to work together for the protection of Cambodia—the [national] police cannot do this job on their own,” Prince Sirirath said. “The gendarmerie are well trained—no one would fool with them.”
While Phnom Penh has not suffered the effects of this policy change, remote areas in the countries are hurting because of the few numbers of police, the prince said.
Another top military police official, who declined to be identified, agreed with the prince.
“The law limits our mission,” the official said. “Sometimes, terrorists are not military personnel—they are civilian—and we cannot arrest them.”
Lawbreakers such as killers and thieves also escape punishment because the military police cannot, by law, arrest them—even when the county’s other police forces do not crack down on them, the official said.
“Sometimes, the problems related to security are made worse because the gendarmerie does not have the same power it once did,” the official said.
The law passed by the Assembly, however, makes some exceptions, according to Klok Buddhi, secretary to the Assembly’s Legislative Committee. The military police can arrest civilians if a provincial governor, deputy governor or district chief gives the gendarme a direct order to detain a suspect, he said, but conceded that the gendarme cannot “take the initiative” to arrest any civilian.
Before the November law, Klok Buddhi said there was too much discord between the two police forces because the police would refuse to make an arrest and the gendarme would need to be called in, or vice-versa, he said.
“We’ve seen it in the past—if the regular police were ordered by the courts to arrest the owner of a brothel, the police might call up the brothel owner and tip them off or just collect bribes and not make the arrest,” one international observer said. “The military police would then be called in to make the arrest.”
Although no statistics are currently available for the number of arrests made by provincial military police compared to the number of arrests made by other police forces, provincial authorities said arrests by all authorities are down.
“We used to arrest 10 people a day a few years ago, but now it’s down to about 20 or 40 people a month,” said Banteay Meanchey province Governor Thach Khoun. “If necessary, I will order the military police to take action, but some cases do not involve them.”
Var Sarith, military police commander for Kompong Cham province, said the gendarme only arrested one civilian during December even though Kompong Cham is reputed to be one of the most crime-ridden areas in the country.
“The police crack down and arrest more than the military police because more cases are under their authority,” Var Sarith said.
