Kelantan police chief issues warning over failure to meet drug arrest KPI

In Kelantan, police chief Yusoff Mamat has issued a stern warning about the state's inability to meet a drug arrest KPI, with seven of the 56 police stations failing to arrest at least one drug addict daily. The chief stated that police would not tolerate any station going a week without recording a drug-related arrest, and a task force from the state headquarters would be deployed to such areas to make an arrest if none were made.

The seven stations in three districts that failed to record any arrests in a week cited difficulties in locating suspects or cases where suspects had fled. However, the chief emphasized that if the task force could make an arrest and the local policemen could not, it would indicate a failure in their job performance. The police chief will first issue a warning letter to station chiefs who fail to meet the KPI, but action will follow if the situation does not improve.

The state police headquarters monitors the performance of all stations weekly and will conduct a post-mortem after the three-month KPI pilot program ends next month. Station chiefs are called in to identify those who have failed to meet the target and determine the reasons for their shortfall. The Kelantan police's approach to combating drug abuse has raised concerns about the possibility of wrongful arrests and other abuses without necessarily reducing criminal activity.