After almost three years of little progress, the Thai police have announced that they will not resist the junta leader to use his absolute power to reform the police force while a civil society group points out that decentralisation is the key to police reform.
On 1 February 2017, Police Watch (PW), a civil society group campaigning for police reform, issued a statement urging Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha, the junta leader and Prime Minister, to decentralise the administration of the Royal Thai Police (RTP), which is controlled by the National Police Office.
“The centralised administrative system under the National Police Office monopolises the interrogative works to only one department...This makes it easier for high-ranking officers to accept bribes from law offenders,” reads part of the group statement.
The group stated that the administrative authorities of the police should be decentralised to the provincial level in order to cut the bureaucratic red tape, increasing the efficiency of the police works.
More radically, they suggested that an independent interrogation department should be established under the Ministry of Justice to interrogate suspects of crimes instead of the police.
They also urged the authorities to amend Thailand’s Criminal Procedure Code in order to allow public prosecutors to monitor the process to interrogate suspects of crime conducted by police officers.
On the same day, Pol Col Kritsana Pattanacharoen, Deputy Spokesperson of the RTP, said that the police will accept the decision of the junta leader, whether or not Section 44 of the Interim Constitution should be used for reforming the RTP.
He added that the police have laid out the 10-point police reform policy many years ago one of which is to make promotions and appointments of the officers more transparent.
Kritsana added that the use of Section 44 to handle such matter will not be considered as a violation of the authorities of the RTP Chief, before contradicting himself by saying that promotions and appointments of the police were done transparently in the past.
On 30 February, the junta leader announced at the Government House in Bangkok that although the police reform is necessary, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) has no plan to use Section 44 for it as yet.
Since the 2014 coup d’état, the NCPO stated that police reform is one of the top priorities of the regime. Almost three years later, however, little progress on the plan has been made.
According to a police office of mid-ranking position who asked Prachatai to remain anonymous, the top-down approach of the NCPO to use its absolute power in reforming the police force will not bring about positive changes.
“They are just doing lip-service. They only care about staying in power and don’t really care about reforming the force,” he told Prachatai.