GUA MUSANG – Kelantan police are keeping up with routine monitoring of border security as usual by carrying out ‘snap checks’ on the move during the current hot spell.
Kelantan police chief Datuk Muhamad Zaki Harun said the sweltering heat did not affect the assignment of personnel on duty and the number of inspections may increase according to current needs.
According to him, however, the strategy of monitoring will be varied to suit the situation, keeping smugglers off-balanced with ‘unpredictability’.
“Snap checks are not seasonal, we do it unabatedly whether it is hot or in the normal season and the frequency may be increased from time to time. It’s just that we vary the strategy, sometimes what we do seems obvious, but we may be acting on intelligence and conduct snap checks in the right places.
“Nowadays the strategies used by criminals are varied. For instance, in terms of smuggling illegal immigrants in, the modus operandi used to be with a large van, but now the entry is held on a small scale, and instead of direct entry, now they use a transit point, so we plan based on what is happening,” he said.
He said this at the Gua Musang District headquarters (IPD) here yesterday.
Commenting further, Muhamad Zaki said police used three approaches in the effort to curb the entry of illegal aliens through the border.
“My approach in Kelantan is three-layered, which is at the border, followed by the district police chiefs, and police station chiefs and patrols, roadblocks and routine inspections.
“For example, yesterday’s arrest of illegal immigrants hidden in a plantation was a success on the second level, the police chief knew about this (based on intelligence) and made an inspection, so it all depends on information received from the public,” he said.
He said Kelantan police also made an application to the Crime Prevention and Community Safety Department (JPJKK) to increase the number of vehicles for their mobile patrol vehicle (MPV) and Motorcycle Patrol Unit (URB).
“In the past, we could only reach 80 shifts but now we have gone to more than 100. So I think the addition of these vehicles will mean more inspections as we focus on the border areas,” he said. – Bernama
