Kuala Lumpur Targets Safe City Top 20 by 2020

In March 2012 the Kuala Lumpur police force set itself the goal of catapulting the city into the world’s safest 20 cities by 2020 – no mean feat given it had just been named the world’s 79th safest city to live on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) livability index.

The City’s police chief, Datuk Mohmad Salleh, said the programme’s success would be measured against four barometers:

• Strengthening human capital
• Streamlining the service delivery system
• Enhancing community policing
• Improving logistics

To fulfil the human capital dimension the country’s most talented police personnel would be seconded from around the country – not a popular move out in the provinces, one might imagine – to work in the capital.

A community policing plan, meanwhile, would create communication channels between the police and public via Facebook and Twitter, while the city police official website would be made more interactive, more conducive to public feedback.

Finally, the force would improve crime prevention and conviction rates through the installation and upgrading of CCTV cameras and boosting numbers of patrol cars, among other policies.

Once one of south-east Asia’s safest cities, Kualu Lumpur’s crime rate has soared along with its population, which has tripled in four decades.

Reported crime doubled from 2000 to 2009, although the government claims crime has since fallen sharply thanks to improved CCTV coverage and the installation of road barriers, which deter drive-by, bike-borne bag-snatchers – a chronic problem in Kuala Lumpur.

They’ve also studied police strategies in New York, where crime has plummeted since 1990 (although this reflects a trend consistent across developed economies and attracts countless theories besides improving police tactics).

The government has often been authoritarian in its attempts to address the problem, passing laws in September 2013 that gave police authority to detain suspects without trial.

Gated communities

Still, Kuala Lumpur residents certainly don’t feel very safe given the proliferation of gated residencies in middle-class and wealthy neighbourhoods. Demand for personal guards has soared and the number of Malaysian certified security companies more than tripled from 200 to 712, according to figures from the Security Services Association of Malaysia.

Last year the city’s US Embassy was alarmed enough by the frequency of drive-by bag snatches to issue this warning to US citizens: “Remember to carry your backpack or purse on the shoulder AWAY from the road to prevent having it snatched by motorbikers.”

Opposition politicians have accused the government, which has changed the way it presents crime statistics to focus on so-called ‘index crimes’, of massaging the figures. Bafflingly, the UN says it no longer receives crime statistics from the Malaysian government.

But in response to a request from The New York Times, the Malaysian police provided detailed crime statistics showing that the number of homicides over the past 12 years had remained relatively unchanged at about 600 a year. Some observers, however, feel that crimes are often not reported because of a lack of faith in the police.

The data also show wide swings in specific categories of crime, including a sharp reduction in robberies using a firearm to 17 cases in 2012 from 722 cases nationwide in 2000; and in gang robberies, to 110 cases in 2012 from a high of 1,809 in 2010. Unfortunately reported cases of rape doubled between 2000 and 2012, although it’s unclear whether victims have simply become more willing to report such crimes.

Longstanding polices that give preferential treatment to the ethnic Malay community to the disadvantage of ethnic Indians, which account for 7% of the population but a third of gang members, exacerbate the crime problem. Based on this interpretation social and economic reform would need to accompany improvements to CCTV coverage and policing.

In the 2011 Malaysia Economic Monitor the World Bank urged municipal governments to invest more heavily in “smarter cities” to cut crime and improve livability, particularly by reversing policies that encouraged “significant urban sprawl” and falling population densities.

Natural disasters

Being a ‘safe’ city means more than just reducing crime, as the report pointed out. Citing the 2011 floods in Ayutthaya, Thailand it said Malaysia needed strategies to mitigate climate change and manage the risk of natural disasters.

“Malaysian cities are especially vulnerable to floods and landslides,” Annette Dixon, the World Bank’s Country Director for Malaysia. “To reduce the risks related to these hazards, Malaysia would benefit from environmental restoration and integration of risk reduction into development planning.”

The plans to open communication channels between police and the public via social media – a tool which can give police forces rapid situational awareness as David Gorshkov discussed on these pages – suggest Kuala Lumpur authorities have been sensitive to the report’s recommendations.

Whether they have the means and will to build a safer city based on an integrated approach, one that breaks down silos between government, big business, emergency services, transport authorities, management of other key national infrastructure and indeed the general public remains to be seen.

If not, then affluent citizens will continue to protect themselves unilaterally, installing their own CCTV, employing their own guards and erecting fences around their communities.

The development of gated communities always stands as a reproach to the failure of government policy and can never protect people beyond the walls of their residential compounds – or, indeed, Malaysians on modest incomes.

Free Download: The Video Surveillance Report 2023

Discover the latest developments in the rapidly-evolving video surveillance sector by downloading the 2023 Video Surveillance Report. Over 500 responses to our survey, which come from integrators to consultants and heads of security, inform our analysis of the latest trends including AI, the state of the video surveillance market, uptake of the cloud, and the wider economic and geopolitical events impacting the sector!

Download for FREE to discover top industry insight around the latest innovations in video surveillance systems.

Download The Video Surveillance Report