Was the fight still on when the police arrived? If not, yes, the victim must lodged a magistrate complaint or proceed with civil sue. The law does not give police the right to arrest someone for Voluntary Causing Hurt.
However if he is drunk and making a scene, he could be arrested for disorderly behaviour or arrest both man (assailant cos he won and victim cos he was bleeding? Its subjective) for affray.Different scenarios call for different application of the law. What you see might not necessary be what really hap...could be the supposed victim actually assaulted the other party. We never know.
Anyway back to this case, I really hope SPF could step up and give a proper explaination while the paper should also exercise restraint in its reporting. It really could just be a storm in a teacup.
to summarise my story, there were actually 3 assailants attacking a taxi driver. all punching
and kicking the defenceless victim. if it was not some onlookers that seperated them and
stop the 3 assailants, the victim could be killed of brain concussion due to the excessive
blows to his head. 2 got away b4 the POs arrive. 1 was too drunk to even know which way
to run, so kena caught. (when the POs arrived at the scene, we pointed out to the PO
the direction this drunken escape, instead of running to get the assailant, the PO walks like
patrolling on orchard road. if he was not drunk,
he could walk faster than the PO).
from what i know, before any PO can make an arrest of a suspect, a senior rank PO is
required to call his ops room or senior office, duty officer for permission and instruction.
the ops room will assess the case, to determine if any crime is committed b4 a PO on the
ground can take out his 'rolex king'. so for the case i described above, the DO from ops
room probably had said:"
nevermind, ah beng hit ah seng, no criminal offence for now
unless the victim die or suffer serious injury. for now, let the ah beng carry-on with
his happy hours and finish off his balance johnny walker."
look, this is a stardard procedure for a non criminal case.
(unless is a clear cut criminal case than the PO is exempted to call ops room, the PO should
know what is clear cut lah). so, for this case, if the PO handcuffed the photographer without
verifying with the ops room, and later release the photographer knowing that he has no
case, i think i hv to say good luck to him. on the other hand if he did, than how could the
DO in ops room knows what was the situation on the ground which granted him to cuff a
non suspect n release him later?
i dont know, something is juz not right some way. :think:
