I Could Have Stopped The Riot

As many of you might know, I was an officer with the Singapore Police Force (SPF) for ten years and spent quite an amount of that time plying my trade in Little India. I left the force in 2005 for a several reasons, one of which was the way the SPF was turning out to be. With so much documentation and miscellaneous duties, policing became too much about following procedures rather than fighting crime - and worse, victims, perpetrators and every human being in the process became just another inanimate feature of each case.

When I first heard about rumours of a riot in Little India, I expected it to be an exaggeration of some accident scene because of the crowd that had gathered. But as the story unfolded, it quite sounded like mob mentality had resulted in wanton public violence.

However, as the details eventually become established, it looks more and more like a typical incident that spiralled out of control. In my time as a police officer attending cases in the vicinity of Little India, coming across accidents on a crowded Sunday evening is not something new - as is coming across disputes, thefts and even robberies. In this case, (possibly) careless driving led to a pedestrian (or disembarking passenger, as some eye witness testimonies suggest) being run over.

Naturally, as anyone who has been to Little India will tell you, a large crowd formed at the scene of the accident and fellow countrymen of the injured person started to panic and look at ways to extricate him from the situation. However, the bus driver (perhaps out of fear) chose to remain inside and not move the vehicle, which only served to exacerbate the situation. The distraught bystanders who were trying to help then became desperate and tried to break into the bus in order to move it (notice the lack of aggression or violence in the video below).

As one can expect, dustbins and random pieces of equipment would not be able to break the tempered glass of the windows or doors and so, the desperation merely escalated. Eventually, the Police arrived at the scene and (probably) projected aloofness, which gave the impression that the officers didn't care about the injured person or the despairing bystanders. By addressing the needs of the bus driver (who must have looked like the victim under the circumstances) the bystanders and others watching on the sidelines would have felt incredibly marginalised.

This is probably what infuriated others not directly involved with trying to rescue the injured person, and here is where the mob mentality truly set in, not any earlier. Having reached this tipping point, the bystanders would have reacted angrily and started attacking the Police vehicles and - by extension - the rescue vehicles (and personnel).

What I Would Have Done

After learning of these details I was actually surprised, because I have encountered similar elements and circumstances in other incidents while I was an officer myself. In fact I have brought things under control in similarly escalating situations before.

Basically, it is all about perception and a crowd of Indian workers expect sympathy and some concern for a fellow countryman who has been injured (or killed). Even with most of the situation already unfolding at the point when the Police arrived, I am fairly confident it could have been brought under control. I presume the situation to be a small crowd of distraught workers panicking and trying to gain access into the bus so that it can be moved to aid the rescue of the injured/dead person, surrounded by a larger crowd of onlookers (this has been corroborated by the description given in the letter from the Singapore High Commissioner to India).

Thus, upon reaching, the main persons to be addressed would have been the bus driver, the injured person and the group of distraught workers. Simply empathising with the distraught workers and letting them know that you are there to help the injured person would have actually calmed them down significantly and secured their cooperation (as opposed to unilaterally instructing them to stop their perceived aggression). By keeping the focus of this distraught group on rescuing the injured person (or his body), attention could have been diverted away from the driver inside the bus.

Next, getting the cooperation of the bus driver to move the bus or allow another officer to enter the bus to assist/direct the next course of action could have given control over to the officers at the scene since the crowd's objectives (gaining access to the bus to move it and aiding the injured person) would have been met. The watching bystanders would have had no reason to get angry and would have been satisfied that the authorities were being fair to the situation.

Depending on how heated the atmosphere was at the time, the bystanders could even have been co-opted to help console and reason with the distraught group, which would have diverted focus of this larger group onto the injured person and the affected workers rather than deliberate on the cause of the accident.

With the crowd thus under control and basically responsive to the police officers at the scene, medical aid could have been rendered without much interference and any hostility. Even with the injured person being pronounced dead, the crowd reaction could have been limited to just the grief by discussing the deceased's family instead of the cause of death (i.e. the accident) or about seeking justice. At this point, the bystanders could be asked to disperse or move back so that emergency vehicles and personnel can do the necessary. Once this space and distance has been created, the bus driver could be whisked away from the scene to further dissipate any tension at the point of accident.

All this could have been executed without the need for too many officers on duty and with no necessity for the SOC (i.e. 'riot police') being activated or for the need to recall all the off-duty officers of two police stations (which is what happened on Sunday night). While this is being portrayed as a major incident with all manner of pointless initiatives being rolled out as a knee-jerk reaction - not to mention the inevitable additional workload that awaits the already-overworked police officers of the area, in reality it all stems from a routine circumstance that has happened many, many times in various parts of Little India over the years.

This is why I am particularly saddened by this incident - an accident aftermath that was allowed to escalate into something so serious, and it is the first time since I left the SPF 8 years ago that I feel a tinge of regret - because had I not resigned, this riot may very well not even have happened.

_________________

Interestingly, I have covered the basics of this sort of situation in Chapter 3 (Handling Disputes) of my book which I published in 2008. If you're interested, feel free to click the button below to get it in ebook format.

ST's Rachel Chang Misinforms Public On Election Process

The comedy of the Elections Department mucking up the one job they really have (I created a meme on this - see below) was a source of great fun. How else can I rationalise the authority on the matter going to the Police instead of explaining to the public and the PM sending a proxy to explain the matter which is clearly under his purview.

But the funniest thing really has to be a 'political writer' from the main broadsheet in Singapore describing the election process so erroneously. I had to do a double-take when I first read the paragraph "...after the close of polling, ballots are transferred into different boxes which are sealed and escorted to counting centres, and the empty boxes left behind..." I actually had to check and make sure I hadn't understood the most basic of the voting process wrongly all these years (after all, we are given to believe the Straits Times is the holy grail of journalism).

Ballot boxes are checked, sealed and guarded before the votes are cast and they remain so until they are ready for counting - which happens at counting centres. So the process is --> ballot box sealed at voting centre --> votes are cast into said sealed box --> voting closes --> ballot box transported under Police security to counting centre (source: Elections Department). This essentially is the chain of custody that ensures no tampering and it makes no sense to meddle with the sealed box at the voting centre.

It's amazing that dear Rachel doesn't even understand the election process - it obviously isn't a typo but conceptual fallacy. The editor too - whoever it is (and I couldn't be bothered to check) - obviously doesn't respect himself/herself enough to proofread and check the facts. So this is what the "right thing" is all about huh, Minister Yaacob Ibrahim?

No matter how many awards you bestow on yourself or how much the government paints a lovely picture of you, it is ultimately the quality of your content that determines how good you really are, Straits Times. I'd spend more time upgrading the quality of your reporting instead of hounding ordinary citizens like a shameless bully to pay licensing fees for reproducing articles online which they themselves are featured in.

Cease & Desist What, Mr Zainudin Nordin? Discussion?

On Wednesday (8 May 2013) morning, I was looking through my Facebook news feeds during a break when I chanced upon a post on The Rice Bowl page which mentioned that a Member of Parliament representing the Bishan-Toa Payoh Group Representation Constituency, Zainudin Nordin, had made some rather controversial comments on his public Facebook page.

I was perplexed at this assertion, what with him having directly benefited from the democratic process to become a member of parliament in Singapore - one of the highest paid politicians in the world. The issue of why an MP would use gang rape to explain the concept of democracy continued to bug me and so I decided create the following meme and share it on my facebook page to ask whether he had seriously said such a thing.

My friends and I had some discussion on the matter and soon after, someone pointed me to a screenshot (below) of the statement made by Zainudin. It was actually a quotation from Terry Goodkind, an author, and the entire quotation in its entirety emphasises that democracy should not come at the price of the individual's rights (Goodkind was referring to America's attempts to install a democracy in Iraq during an interview).

I duly added this information that night to the meme that had been posted itself but still continued to wonder what the MP was implying by posting that quotation on his Facebook page. Could it be that he felt the Singapore government was infringing upon the individual's rights here? Or did he hold a dim view of democracy altogether? More questions seemed to arise from a better understanding of the post as it appeared on the MP's Facebook page than before I had that information.

Imagine my surprise when I saw an email from 'zainudinnordin@gmail.com' in my email inbox the next morning, and at first I was quite impressed that the MP had sought me out personally to discuss and clarify his position. Alas, this happy moment was shortlived when the text read:

Dear Mr Gangasudhan,

You have posted a picture of me together with a quote “Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action”, which you have attributed to me.   This is a statement by Terry Goodkind, and not me.   Your post is therefore mischievous and highly defamatory of me, and calculated to embarrass me and cause me damage.   I therefore demand that you remove your post immediately, failing which I will have no option but to take the appropriate legal action against you. All my rights are reserved.

Thank you.
Zainudin Nordin

Honestly, it was quite upsetting to see an MP resort to hostility when open discussion and honest debate could have clarified the matter. I felt unduly persecuted by a person of authority when all I had done was pose a question. At first, I just wanted to delete the meme and be over with it, never again to trust Zainudin Nordin, but after some thought, I felt it would be more constructive to use this opportunity to engage the MP and understand his stand on the concept of democracy and gain insight as to why he would endorse Terry Goodkind's statement. I thus sent the following reply to him, in the hopes that he will refrain from a hostile approach and adopt a more inclusive attitude, befitting an elected official in a democratic institution:

Dear sir, I am puzzled as to why you might feel embarrassed by the combination of your image and a reproduction of what you posted publically on your Facebook page. But more importantly, as a voting member of the public, I am very disturbed by what seems to be your endorsement of this opinion that democracy can be explained away using a heinous crime such as gang rape.

Generally, I do not bother with politicians’ Facebook pages but when I chanced upon a Facebook posting elsewhere on Wednesday morning (https://www.facebook.com/sonofadud/posts/505031336210687) that described the post you had made regarding democracy, I was shocked – to say the least. I thus reproduced the statement attributed to you together with your picture to ask my friends why a politician receiving $192,000 of taxpayer dollars would even think to say such a thing. The picture is to identify the person who said it and the quote is a verbatim reproduction, thus I do not see what there is to be embarrassed about nor how could this be interpreted as mischievous intent. In fact, this was merely an act of free speech in posing a legitimate question to my friends – how could a highly-paid elected official who has taken office to represent the people through a democratic process imply that the very same process was akin to gang rape? 

Subsequently, through the responses from my friends, I was able to find a screen-capture of the posting as it appeared on your Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=523797831010442) and noticed that you had actually reproduced a quote from someone else and not directly made the statement yourself, thus I added the relevant information to reflect this new information on Wednesday night (see screen-capture below).

 

Looking at the quotation you reproduced on your Facebook page in full though, I am no more reassured by your position on the issue of democracy. The statement by Terry Goodkind suggests that the rights of the individual should not be infringed in the name of democracy, so are you saying that the Singapore government – a democratically elected institution - does not recognise the rights of the individual?

At best, the reproduction of Terry Goodkind’s statement demonstrates poor taste in discussing the concept of democracy – not to mention makes light of the very serious crime of rape (what more, with the world reeling from the news of the many brutal rape cases in India). As an ethnic Indian, I am actually offended at the insinuation that I would use the issue of gang rape to be “mischievous” in any way.

I am also disappointed that as an elected member of parliament who purports to represent the interests of your constituents, you have taken issue with a meme meant to invite discussion – i.e. instead of engaging in discussion and clarifying your position, you have attempted to remove the discussion altogether. This is not at all what I would expect from an elected representative of the people and I have somewhat lost faith in your ability to represent the best interests of the community of Singaporeans you serve.

I therefore hope that you will use this opportunity to engage in discussion and reassure me, a citizen of Singapore, rather than continue with what appears to be an exercise to silence me, thank you. In the meanwhile, I will share this exchange with my friends through my personal blog so that others can better understand the context of the meme I created as well as your thoughts on the matter, take care.

Ganga

| www.gangasudhan.com 

| www.gangasudhan.com/blog 

| +65-90602206

I now await the reply from Zainudin Nordin and will decide what to do next depending on his reply. Hopefully, this will be just a misunderstanding from which we can come out with an insight into his opinions and philosophy on democracy and civil rights. Whatever it is, I shall update the developments here.

UPDATE 10/05/2013 @ 2345HRS

MP Zainudin Nordin replied at around 4.30pm with the following email message:

Dear Mr Gangasudhan, 

It is clear from your initial posting that it was your intention to ridicule me, and not to debate issues. To do that, you deliberately and mischievously attributed Terry Goodkind’s quote to me and even extracted, without context, part of that quote. Your motives were plain and your response, contrived. You had no choice but to correct this egregious error, but I note there is no hint of an apology from you.  

I think it is important to have open, honest debates on issues of the day. It is responses such as yours which in fact stifle honest debate and discourage people from sharing their views. 

Thank you.
Zainudin Nordin
Sent from my iPhone

iPad Lessons at SINDA

On Thursday, I attended a one-day workshop on using the iPad for pedagogy and got a few ideas from the trainer, John Larkin (whose website is really resources-rich) and fellow participants. I never took the apps offered on iPad seriously till the workshop and thus decided to explore how I could use the apps available on the App Store (the free ones, that is) for my own classroom use.

That evening, right after the workshop, I had a science lesson with some P6 students at Pasir Ris STEP centre, so I decided to see how a science-related game might be received. I managed to find one called DK Quiz which is a rapid fire timed quiz of 20 questions in a multiple-choice format. This particular quiz app offers many different categories (e.g. Science & Technology, Natural History) and sub-categories (e.g. Incredible Bodies, Worlds Apart, All Things Creepy Crawly & All About Behaviour), allowing for (relatively) targeted practice.

In class, hooking up was as easy as it gets (VGA cable, audio cable and the iPad port-to-VGA converter) and the game was a hit with the students who loved the break from the normal routine of worksheets and practice papers. Each round took about 2 minutes or so and we had about 4 to 5 rounds just before the lesson ended for the day.

Inspired by how it went, I decided to try a more elaborate lesson for my Maths class on Saturday morning at East View STEP centre, with about 12 students. I trawled the App Store again and discovered quite a number of math-centred games and tools. One interesting and stylish game app called King of Games really stood out. The free version allows Addition, Subtraction and Mixed (i.e. Addition/Subtraction) topics with a S$1.28 purchase offering the full version of 9 other topics (i.e. altogether 12 topics).

Each topic (called 'book' in the game) has 9 chapters and each chapter has a rapid fire series of 10 maths questions in a multiple-choice format. But the interesting thing is the questions are phrased in a way that tests the students' ability from different angles. I used this app as a trigger/warm-up activity before proceeding to the lesson proper. Watch the video below to appreciate the impact/value of this app.

As the focus for the Saturday sessions was to guide the students on word problems (the format of the lesson would be to show a word problem, get the students to try it and then show them how to work through it, before moving on to the next word problem), I decided to use the app called Singapore Math which offers word problems and worked answers (there's an app for each level) for the types of questions where models need to be drawn.

While the app's free version only offers a few questions, there is a 'tool' option where you can use the workspace to work out any other question you would like. I thus used questions from the assessment I was using for the class but instead of working out the answer on the white board, I used the neater representation of the app's workspace to show the students how the answer is worked out. The video below shows me working out one question for the students.

All in, the experiment resulted in positive outcome, with the students enjoying and learning together. I do like how the iPad can be easily set up and conveniently carried around, making it an easy option with minimal fuss (as opposed to using a laptop). Needless to say, I intend to incorporate more of the same into my lessons at SINDA, with the probability of using many other apps.

The next step will be to see what apps can be used to deliver Lifeskills lessons at my day job as an ITE Lecturer.

The Birthday Mystery - A Reportedly P6 Maths Question

Earlier this week, a colleague of my mine came to me and said, "Hey, you high IQ right? Can help with a question? My girlfriend wants to teach her P6 daughter and cannot solve this question." My colleague then showed me this on her phone.

Having prefixed her request with "you high IQ, right", my ego was at stake and I had to nonchalantly reply, "I think should be able to answer, just need some time." I asked my colleague to forward me the image and started to work on it. Initially, I thought it could be a calendar question where the confluence of month/day could be determined but after a few searches on the internet, I realised it was probably a logic question of some sort.

Once I looked at the logical relationship of the situation and the statements made by the characters, I figured it must be a process of elimination that would lead to the correct birth date. Thus, here is how you arrive at the answer.

Because Ben knows the month, he can deduce what 'day' values Mark cannot possibly have. Hence, since Ben says "I can ensure that Mark doesn't know", this means that the 'day' in the correct birth date does not appear just once among the 10 dates provided, thus we can deduce the correct birth date does not fall along the months including 7/6/1970 and 2/12/1970, which therefore eliminates both these rows.

Following Ben's statement, Mark too then knows that these two rows do not have the correct birth date, and since Mark says "now I know it", this means that of the remaining, he is able to pick the correct one because his 'day' value is no longer duplicated (i.e. the remaining birth dates would not have duplicate 'day' values, therefore eliminating 5/3/1970 & 5/9/1970).

And finally, since Ben can identify the birth date at this point, this means that there must be only one month value left which would eliminate 4/3/1970 and 8/3/1970, leaving 1/9/1970 as the correct birth date.

Of course, expecting this train of thought from of a 12-year-old is ridiculous.

Update:
I was alerted to the fact that MOE posted on twitter that the above is not a PSLE question (to be honest, I didn't think it was a PSLE question, to begin with). However, a few people have posted that they were indeed asked to try this question in school. In addition, this type of question is called an Impossible Puzzle and different variations do exist (if you're interested in this type of thing).