Source:
The Online Citizen
Man claims to be injured by plainclothes officers after asking to verify police identity
APRIL 5, 2015 BY TERRY XU IN TOC REPORTS · 3 COMMENTS
Facial injuries by Mr Lim after the police pinned him down on
the floor. Bandages by paramedics called to scene.
A man has claimed that he was injured by a group of plainclothes police officers after he flipped the Identification Card of one officer who was taking down details from him.
Mr Lim Chin Huat, 40, a businessman has since filed a police report on Saturday, 4 April against the group of officers after sustaining multiple injuries from their actions.
Complaint’s story of what happened –
The details in below are similar to the police report submitted by Mr Lim.
According to Mr Lim, he was drinking with a group of about 8 friends at a pub “Yang Gui Fei”, located at Level 3 of Hotel Rendzeous on Thursday, 2 April, 11.30 pm when a group of about 8 plainclothes police officer entered the place at 1.30 am in the early morning of Friday to conduct spot check.
The officers had their ID tags over their necks but all of them had the tags covered by turning it the other side, said Mr Lim
When 2 or 3 of the police officers came to their table and asked for their identity cards, Mr Lim tried to ascertain the identity of the police officers who was conducting the spot-check but the officers refused to do so.
However, Mr Lim still cooperated and surrendered his identification card to to the police officer despite not being shown the ID cards.
The police officers then started asking them for their contact number after they had recorded the details from their NRICs. While doing this, one of the officers kept pointing at him, which led to Mr Lim asking for his name once again.
The police officer mumbled his name and Mr Lim could not hear him clearly. Mr Lim then asked the police officer to write down his name for him but the police officer refused to do that and told him to write down himself if he wanted to.
Mr Lim asked for a piece of paper which the police officer declined to do so, even though he had a stack in front of him. He had no choice but to take a serviette to write the name down.
According to Mr Lim, he reached out and turned the name tag of the police officer around to see the spelling of the name as it was not facing him. At this point, the police officer’s colleagues shouted at him, saying that he is not allowed to touch the ID.
Mr Lim said that he quickly apologised and said that he was not aware of this ruling.
According to what Mr Lim recalled, the officers made obvious eye contact with each other and started restraining his arms, without any warning given and he was unaware why they were doing that. There were also no instructions given by the police officers to him of what to do next, whether should he squat down or place his hands anywhere.
The police officers proceeded to pin him down to the floor and Mr Lim landed on his right-cheek. Mr Lim’s arms were pushed to the back and had his hands handcuffed.
According to Mr Lim, they applied heavy force to his arms and kept shouting “Don’t move” even though he was not moving at all and surrounded him.
While he did not struggle during the arrest, the police officers slammed their knee cap on his face repeatedly, left and right and as a result, Mr Lim bled profusely on his head.
Only at a point of time, when someone shouted, “bleeding already!” that led to the abrupt stop of the police officers’ actions. The person who shouted is said to of a by-stander who was tall enough to see beyond the police officers who surrounded Mr Lim.
The police officers then held him tightly on his arm and forced his head to be lowered. Again, without any further instructions and the police officers held Mr Lim up forcefully to stand up and dragged him out of the pub and into a lift, refusing entry for his friends who were with him.
As they were heading towards the police car, one of the officer slammed his head onto the car bonnet (see the below photo).
In the video below, Mr Lim’s friends recorded the scene where the police officers wanted to put him into the police car but he refused to do so as he does not trust the officers anymore. Mr Lim called out to his friends to call his lawyer and said he wanted to go to the hospital instead.
[video=youtube;0uy_B-E6VWE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uy_B-E6VWE[/video]
According to Mr Lim, he told the paramedics who arrived at the scene with the ambulance that he was beaten up by the police, but understands that they were powerless to do anything outside of their job scope.
Injuries sustained from the incident
Photos of the injuries substained during the scuffle with the police officers.
Injuries due to the hand cuff
The hospital discharge record show that Mr Lim suffered injuries to his head and had a fracture to his nasal bone.
Although his arm was fractured but the hospital did not include in the report as they said that it would only be available in a detailed medical report which is available to investigators.
Mr Lim said in Chinese, “The police cannot be trusted, there is no justice.” “The police does not follow proper procedure”, “This is not what I expected the police to be.”
He also said that the police did not show any concern when he was bleeding.
Mr Lim is said to be charged by the police for disorderly behavior by speaking loud in the general public and assault on police officer for tugging at the lanyard of the officer, which Mr Lim denies.
TOC has written to the Singapore Police Force on the matter and will include their response when they reply.
Writer’s note – On the point about presenting two sides of the story, out of all the enquires TOC has sent so far to the SPF. Most are left unanswered after months and even if the police do reply, they would say that the information is private or ask TOC to read from what has been published.
End of Article