Eighteen police officers are to face ethics hearings over allegations they had extorted 45 Malaysians attending the Djakarta Warehouse Project (DWP) dance music festival in Jakarta.
National Police internal affairs chief Insp Gen Abdul Karim told a press briefing on Tuesday that 18 officers had been detained.
“The investigation by the internal affairs division decided to bring the alleged culprits to an ethics hearing next week,” Abdul said without disclosing the officers’ identities, saying that they were from different precincts and sub-precincts in Central Jakarta and the Jakarta Metropolitan Police.
The police also confiscated 2.5bil rupiah (RM685,650) in cash. The announcement on the ethics probe comes after viral complaints over the alleged extortion, with some users posting on X that certain police officers had extorted money from festivalgoers by forcing them to take drug tests and threatening criminal charges when their test results came back negative.
The three-day festival ran from Dec 13 to 15 at Jakarta International Expo (JIExpo) in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta. After the extortion allegations went viral, the police’s internal affairs received reports from two Malaysian nationals, Abdul said, without providing further details.
“We, the police, are committed to investigating any alleged violations by our own officers. We will take stern action” if they were proven guilty, he said.
Abdul added that his office was in constant communication with the National Police Commission (Kompolnas) as the “external oversight” body, “so we are transparent in our investigation”.
He did not mention if criminal charges would be brought against the 18 officers if the internal probe found the allegations to be true.
Festival organiser Ismaya Live posted a message on Instagram last week, urging people to report any information they had about the DWP incident to the police. — The Jakarta Post/ANN
