5 shot dead by police - now sister and 2 kids in hospital fighting for life..

Another 'shoot to kill' incident which sees 5 human persons shot dead by the Malaysian police.

The police should be arresting people - not killing people, and later justifying their actions stating that these were 'evil' persons...blah...blah. They are dead...and they cannot anymore defend themselves. I do not believe that the police could not have arrested these persons, for after all the police now claim that they knew these persons who they claim were '...part of the 'PCO Boy' gang, responsible for a spate of robberies...'.

If you have to use your guns...then should you not be shooting with the aim of arresting them... not killing them. 1 or 2 shot dead...and 3 shot and arrested... that would have been more logical - but 5 shot dead? 

Will there be an inquiry into this incident? An inquiry to determine whether police action of killing the 5 was justified. An inquiry to determine the intention of the police when they shot these persons - was it to injure and arrest, or was it to just 'kill'. Was there even any intention to arrest them alive? When the police have to shoot, it must be with the intention of trying to arrest - not to '...stop the deadly force threat...'. To arrest a person, the law allows the police to use reasonable force. The objective for the use of force must be to arrest the person - nothing else.

There have just been too many 'shoot to kill' incidents in Malaysia - and it must stop. 

The grief of losing her brother in a hail of police bullets was apparently too much to handle for a mother of four, who consumed poison and fed the deadly potion to her children as well.

The 31-year-old housewife is currently warded with two of her children, aged five and eight, in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Klang's Tengku Ampuan Rahimah hospital.

Her other two children, aged three and seven, are in stable condition and undergoing treatment in the normal ward.
On Monday, the woman's brother R Surendran was among five suspected criminals shot dead by the police in Taman Klang Utama.

The police claimed that the five - aged between 17 and 30 - were part of the 'PCO Boy' gang, responsible for a spate of robberies.

Commenting on the suicide attempt, Human Rights Party leader P Uthayakumar said: "The family could not digest the injustice.

"And since there was no other way to fight the system, they resorted to something as drastic as this in their moment of grief."

Met at the hospital later, the victim's husband said when he asked their children, who are in the normal ward, what had happened, they told him that their mother had poured the paraquat into several glasses this morning.

"She then told them that if they drank the substance, they could go and see their uncle," added the distraught lorry driver.

According to him, his wife was very close to her brother.

Cops: We're not trigger-happy

Meanwhile, Uthayakumar warned that if the woman - who is said to be in critical condition - does not survive, they would bring her remains to Parliament as a mark of protest against police shootings.

The police on Tuesday denied that they were "trigger-happy".

"When police officers shoot, they do not shoot to kill, but rather they shoot to stop the deadly force threat," said CID director Mohd Bakri Mohd Zinin in a statement.

"It is clearly within the right of the police to act in self-defence and protect the lives of innocent bystanders," he added.

Uthayakumar has previously campaigned against the police for the high number of alleged criminals being shot dead over the years.- Malaysiakini, 12/11/2009, Double blow for shootout victim's family

See also post:- Another 'shoot to kill' incident - 5 dead.