KUALA LUMPUR, Jan. 23 — City police chief commissioner Datuk Seri Mazlan Lazim today urged the public to stop taking photos and videos of crimes with the intention of making them viral on social media.
The police chief said instead of doing that, the public should report the crime they witness to the police so that immediate action can be taken.
“When such videos or photos are posted without any facts of what actually happened, the public will come to their own conclusion and also create bad perception against the authorities.
“This leads to a much bigger problem where the public has a bad perception against police and they wrongly assume that we are not doing our job.
“If you don’t report it to us, how are we to investigate, people have a habit of passing comments fast. That’s not right, we haven’t done any investigations, so you cannot assume who is right or wrong in a posting,” he told reporters this evening after meeting with shoppers and business operators at the Leisure Mall shopping centre in Cheras during a community policing event.
Mazlan further explained that even when police nab a suspect, he or she is not necessarily the person who committed the crime.
“Even if we arrest a suspect it is not confirmed the person is wrong or a criminal; netizens cannot assume because we are yet to complete our investigations on a suspect. So I urge the public to stop this viral trend and public judgment,” he said.
Mazlan said the walkabout was to educate and give out easy-to-read pamphlets to the people in Cheras so that it will be convenient for the public to contact cops to report an incident instead of just taking photos.
Meanwhile, Mazlan said the crime rate in Cheras is under control.
The district recorded a decrease in violent crime from 2017 to 2018 , where there were 193 cases and 100 cases recorded respectively.
