Phnom Penh Post
Meng Try, a
47-year-old suspected drug dealer, recovers in hospital on Friday, Feb.
15, 2013, after being shot by a police officer in Poipet town.
Photograph: Phnom Penh Post
The wife of a suspected drug dealer is accusing police officers of
wrongfully shooting her husband during an attempted arrest at the
couple’s Banteay Meanchey home last Friday.
Oul Sovann, 27, said her husband – Meng Try, 47 – was cleaning the
road in front of their home when four armed men dressed in civilian
attire stepped out of a car and attempted to arrest him.
Try bolted, and this was when the officers opened fire, his wife
said. Try was shot in the stomach and sent to the Mongkul Borey hospital
following the altercation.
Sovann said doctors had given Try a blood transfusion, but he remains
unconscious. Try suffers from chronic heart disease and has remained
home for a year, she added.
Maintaining her husband’s innocence, Sovann said, “I am so afraid,
because I do not know the reason why the police shot my husband.” She
intends to submit a complaint when Try regains consciousness.
Prosecutors had earlier issued a summons for Try to come in for
questioning, but he failed to do so, forcing the court to issue an
arrest warrant, said provincial court Judge Ith Sophors.
Poipet commune police chief police Um Sophal added that Try was shot
accidentally as officers were forced to wrestle him into submission when
he resisted arrest.
National Police spokesman Kirt Chantharith told the Post that there
are no fixed rules of engagement when it comes to using deadly force.
“It depends on the case involved. We ask our officers to be
disciplined and not to endanger the suspect unless absolutely
necessary,” he said, adding that cases involving drug suspects are
usually “very dangerous”.
He added that officers can fire in the air to threaten the suspect or stop the suspect from running.
Lawyer Sok Sam Oeun from the Cambodian Defenders Project said police
should only open fire in self-defence or in the defence of a third
person.
But, he added, officers tend to err on the side of caution when
making drug-related arrests: “Police here take more precautions, as
officers have been injured and killed before.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Sarom at
newsroom@phnompenhpost.com
Danson Cheong at
dansoncjf@gmail.com
3 comments:
The element of surprise often gives a Police Officers time to close distance, subdue the person and perhaps no one get hurt.
This is what happen when an un-train Police Officer of Cambodia try to arrest a suspect with a gun and axes swing. Un-professional, un-train, un-educated and a former gangster and drug dealer them self.
A Lowell , Massachussetts police officer who was highly trained accidentally shot
a Cambodian man to death when they were called for domestic violent . Police brutality
is everywhere .
So is in Seattle, WA. A simple domestic husband and wife, the wife called Police, the Police shot the husband....Death!
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