Friday September 24, 2010
Gangsterism on the rise
By TAN SIN CHOW
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GEORGE TOWN: Secret societies in Penang are no longer dominated by locals. Even Myanmar migrant workers are now being recruited. Foreigners were recruited to make up the numbers whenever a street fight broke out, Penang police chief Deputy Comm Datuk Wira Ayub Yaakob disclosed.
In view of the escalating activities of secret societies here, especially claims that many secondary school students are being roped in, the police have set up a special task force to penetrate secret societies to identify the leaders as well as curb gangsterism in general.
The task force is jointly headed by George Town OCPD Asst Comm Gan Kong Meng, state Deputy CID chief Supt Mat Nasir Hussein and state Narcotics Department chief Supt R.S.S. Batumalai. DCP Ayub said the police had to put a halt to such activities as there were also cases where members were involved in public fights while under the influence of drugs.
What is more worrying is that those involved were mostly secondary schoolchildren who had turned, or been lured, to street gangs to seek friendship and protection. Where previously feuds among secret societies arose from territorial disputes, DCP Ayub said gang members now were mostly involved in robbery and the narcotics trade.
“We do not want gangsterism to grow. School_children who are gang members have turned school compounds into fighting rings. We need to stop this,” he told a press conference here yesterday. Last month, a 16-year-old student was slashed by two gangsters outside his school in Air Itam here for allegedly refusing to join a gang.
The Form Three student identified one of his attackers, aged 18, as a former schoolmate who had been trying to persuade him to join the gang for a long time. In another incident, three men in their early 20s sustained injuries after they got into a fight with a group of 10 men at a food outlet near the Air Itam wet market. Initial investigations revealed that the fight broke out because the three had refused to join a gang.
