Sunday October 15, 2006
Mat Rempit getting bolder
BY SIRA HABIBU
ALOR STAR: The gangs of illegal street racers have become bol-der and are not intimidated by the law, state deputy police chief SAC (II) A. Thaiveegan warns.
“Some Mat Rempit even dare to kick police cars and show vulgar signs at policemen.
“We are concerned over this new trend where the Mat Rem-pit dared to ridicule and threaten the police,” he said, adding that there were about two or three such cases reported in a day.
SAC (II) Thaiveegan said po-licemen who are provoked, scolded, ridiculed, or challeng-ed by these Mat Rempit have been told to file reports.
He said the state police re-ceived between 100 and 150 complaints a month about the activities of Mat Rempit.
“People are upset with us for not being able to control them. But what are the parents doing, allowing their children to ride motorcycles late at night and in the wee hours of the morning?
“Our hands are also tied. We can only take action against them when they are caught speeding, if they ride without licence, or if they are riding stolen motorcycles.
“In many cases, the Mat Rempit prefer to do stunts on stolen motorcycles. That way they can abandon the machines to avoid detection.
“It is high time that such incidents are recorded as the Mat Rempit are becoming bolder,” he said when commenting on an incident on Wednesday when a policeman allegedly used force on a motorcyclist who was riding without licen-ce.
The owner of the motorcycle lodged a report claiming that that his machine was damaged during the incident. It is learnt that the seat of the motorcycle was torched.
Thaiveegan said an inves-tigation was being carried out to ascertain if the com- plainant was telling the truth about who actually torched the motorcycle.
“So far, we could not find any evidence to substantiate the complainant’s allegations,” he said.
SAC (II) Thaiveegan also said that about 800 policemen would be stationed at 100 “crime hot spots” in Kulim, Sungai Petani, Alor Star and Kubang Pasu during the Dee-pavali and Hari Raya festive pe-riods.
News Poll
- Court ruling takes bite out of local council summonses
- New evidence on MCA snoop squad case arrives at doorstep
- Girl and stepmum held over bid to kill first wife
- Biggest karaoke session a blast
- Chin Peng apologises for death of innocents
- Teoh’s body exhumed for second autopsy today
- Victim’s dad nabs kidnapper
- Puad faces flak over ‘use Bahasa only’ remark
- Foreigner falls to her death from condominium
- Rotten fish the cause of cholera in Sabah and Sarawak
- Johor set to be a medical hub
- Indonesia seizes ammonium nitrate shipment from Malaysia
- Court ruling takes bite out of local council summonses
- Same stock, different folk
- It’s still hard to forgive
- Southern sore still needs to heal
- Weapons drawn for new battle
- Draw valuable, life-saving lessons from tragedies
- Lots of smoke and hot air but little bite
- We are the champions
RSS
