GEORGE TOWN, July 30 — Three recent high-profile shooting incidents indicate that Putrajaya can no longer afford to have fewer than one in 10 police officers actively tackling crime, Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said today

His remark follows a spate of gun-related shootings and murder in the last few days, with the latest high-profile case being the murder of Arab-Malaysian Development Bank (AmBank) founder and financial wizard Hussain Ahmad Najadi in a busy car park in the heart of Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

“It is unacceptable that only nine per cent of the police personnel are directly involved in fighting crime in the streets. Even if we include the Narcotics and Commercial Crime, only 14.2 per cent of police personnel are focused on fighting crime in the streets,” Lim said in a statement here.

“These numbers are too low. The number of police personnel involved in fighting crime should not be 14.2 per cent but at least 50 per cent.”

The DAP secretary-general quoted a written reply by Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi in the Parliament earlier this month, where he revealed that out of a total 112,583 uniformed police officers, only 10,150 (nine per cent) are in the Criminal Investigation Department.

Another 4,224 (3.8 per cent) are in the Narcotic Criminal Investigation, while 1,663 (1.4 per cent) are in the Commercial Investigation Department.

According to Lim, Ahmad Zahid refused to mention the total number of police officers in the Special Branch, the intelligence branch usually tasked to monitor subversive activities, dissidents, and even political figures.

“In other words there should be at least 56,000 police personnel in uniform patrolling the streets and not the present 16,037,” Lim added.

The close-range shooting of the Hussain Ahmad and his wife — who survived the attack — came three days after the attempted murder of anti-crime activist R. Sri Sanjeevan at a traffic light junction in Jempol, Negri Sembilan.

Sanjeevan was said to have been working on exposing the alleged links between rogue police officers and the criminal underworld before he was shot on Saturday afternoon.

Another case occurred on Sunday night in Ipoh when two men opened fire using an automatic gun on a group of restaurant patrons, killing one and injuring two.

Just yesterday in Bukit Mertajam, a man in his 30s survived a gun assault by two unknown attackers, also at a traffic light junction.