SURUHANJAYA PASUKAN POLIS

On the court record

The police disciplinary authority, appearing as respondent in judicial reviews of dismissals, rank reductions and forfeitures, testing the procedural fairness owed to officers under the 1993 conduct and discipline regulations.

Suruhanjaya Pasukan Polis (the Police Force Commission) is the body responsible for the discipline and terms of service of members of the police force, and it appears in the corpus almost exclusively as a respondent in judicial-review challenges to its disciplinary decisions — dismissals, reductions in rank and forfeiture of benefits imposed on serving and former officers.

The recurring subject is the fairness of the disciplinary process. The court's supervisory role in these matters is confined to the legality of the decision-making process — illegality, irrationality and procedural impropriety — rather than the merits, and the challenges repeatedly test the procedural guarantees owed to an accused officer. In one matter the reduction in rank of an officer from Assistant Superintendent to Inspector, with a forfeiture of benefits, was challenged; in others the complaint was that the officer had not been supplied with the documents relied on, including the report of the investigation division of the force, or afforded an oral hearing and the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses, engaging the duty to give reasons under regulations 34, 35, 37 and 38 of the Public Officers (Conduct and Discipline) Regulations 1993.

The interaction between criminal proceedings and disciplinary action features prominently. In one case a senior officer was charged with criminal offences and then interdicted and suspended, and was convicted and sentenced to prison a day after he was due to go on compulsory retirement, the disciplinary proceedings having been held back to await the outcome of the court proceedings. Another matter questioned whether disciplinary action and dismissal founded exclusively on a particular report were premature, unlawful and in excess of jurisdiction while the validity of that report remained sub judice in a separate judicial review, and whether regulation 33(2) of the 1993 Regulations had been misapplied to effect a summary dismissal. A Malay-language matter concerned a former police corporal's "buang kerja" (dismissal from service) after a long suspension, alleging non-compliance with regulation 29. The Commission's footprint is thus a concentrated study in the judicial supervision of police discipline and the procedural fairness the courts require before an officer's rank, benefits or livelihood may be taken away.