The police and the Golden Pig

14 December 1996

In mid-1996, a Chulalongkorn University team released preliminary findings from a research project on Thailand’s illegal economy. The findings included the allegation that Bangkok has many illegal gambling dens or "casinos" which make regular pay-offs to the police.

The police reacted with unusual force. Bangkok police station heads proposed to lay complaints against the researchers in all 75 of Bangkok’s stations. Some officers totally denied the existence of any casinos in Bangkok. The Police Director admitted that they had existed once, but claimed they had now been cleaned up. One station head appeared in television interviews and radio talk-shows dismissing the findings as "not research".

The police campaign went beyond denial. Complaints were filed against one researcher, Sangsit Piriyarangsan, in over 20 stations (such multiple filings are a common technique for harassment). Plain clothes police appeared at the researchers’ faculty. Several uniformed squads camped outside Sangsit’s house to offer "protection". Death threats and pictures of bullets were sent to the research group’s fax machine.

In an extraordinary move, the prime minister stepped in to negotiate a peace. The researchers admitted the study was "incomplete". The police reinterpreted this word as "incorrect", and agreed to back off.

Usually the police are so confident of their power, they simply shrug off criticism. Over the last few years, there have been several commissions of enquiry criticizing the police and demanding reform. Every time, the police have brushed them aside. During the Saudi jewels scandal, the public was shown how gangs of policemen robbed the robbers, and then fought and killed one another over the loot. No senior policeman seemed to think this revealed any deep-seated problem in the force. Some Thai newspapers run regular columns about police malpractice. The police simply ignore them.

Perhaps the fact that the information on police rake-offs from gambling was based on research, and came from a prestigious university, made the police more sensitive. But then again, this is not the first time this Chulalongkorn group has published research critical of the police. In 1993, they published a survey showing police at the top of a list of government units reckoned to be most corrupt. The research also went into great detail about the illegal fees collected by the police, the systems for distributing these fees within the force, and the sums officers pay to get senior posts. When journalists challenged the Police Director General to react to these findings, he laughed it off. Mere academic research. Not significant.

But on this occasion, the mention of casinos seemed to touch a nerve.

In early December, the Chulalongkorn team presented the final research findings at a public seminar. Sangsit’s paper estimated that the police revenue from Bangkok gambling dens was up to 2.77 billion baht a year.

Many police attended the seminar. They listened carefully and took many notes. The station head who had led the mid-year campaign talked directly with Ajarn Sangsit, and afterwards Sangsit told the press that the two "now understand one another well". The research was now "complete", unchanged in essence, and widely reported in the press. The police seemed to have regained their talent for shrugging it off.

Then along came the golden pig.

Pol Maj-Gen Seri Temiyavej is well-known as one of the few senior police officers prepared to speak about police corruption, and about the relations between the police and Thailand’s gangsters and godfathers. He told the Chulalongkorn seminar that Bangkok’s most famous gambling dens run by Chat Taopoon and Po Pratunam had recently been eclipsed by a much larger establishment, the Golden Pig, run by the wife of a senior police officer in northern Bangkok. She had been an enthusiastic gambler herself, and had recently decided to move into the management side of the business. The Golden Pig, Seri claimed, operated under full police protection right down to the guards at the gates.

A golden pig is a symbol of prosperity. A popular version shows the pig wallowing voluptuously in a slurry of golden coins.

The Police Director quickly denied that the Golden Pig existed. Under press questioning, Seri repeated the information three times, but added that the establishment had probably now disappeared into thin air. Senior police officers and the Minister of Interior stated that Seri had shown "bad discipline" in making such allegations.

With Sangsit in June and Seri in December, the police have reacted with aggressive denials. But the police have a credibility problem. It is clear many people believe the allegations about the police and gambling dens.

During the mid-year incident, the council of university rectors, national research council, lawyers association, trade unions, human rights groups, students and slum-dwellers came out to support the researchers. A television station poll found 9:1 in favour of the academics and against the police. People phoned in to talk shows to give the addresses of gambling dens near their homes, and the days on which the police made their regular calls.

At the Chulalongkorn group’s recent seminar, a respected senior civil servant asked the police present to look into a gambling den in his own condominium.

Yet the response of the police is to deny the allegations, and to set up a committee to investigate Seri, not the possible existence of gambling dens.

There is a broader dimension to all this. The Chulalongkorn research suggests that the illegal economy is a root cause of some of the big problems of the day - the huge amounts of money available for vote-buying; the number and prominence of godfather figures; the poor standard of many public services; the rising rate of crime; the growing role of Thailand as an international centre of criminal networks. The fact that illegal activities are allowed to flourish is not the result of some cultural tolerance. Rather, these activities are protected by powerful people - including senior police officers.

Most people are inclined to believe accounts of police corruption, simply because it accords with their own personal experience. Many have had to pay a few hundred baht to policemen for traffic offences. Others pay more regularly for a vending site. Some are heavied for protection fees. It is all too easy to imagine bigger people paying bigger sums to bigger policemen.

Few doubt that gambling really is a "golden pig", a source of abundant prosperity, for senior officers.

On the other hand, nobody believes that all police are corrupt. Again this is grounded on personal experience. Most people have had to deal with police officers who seem straightforward, helpful, dutiful. At the seminar, one police officer reckoned that only two percent of police officers are corrupt, but admitted that this fraction is concentrated in the upper ranks.

The Minister of Interior has complained that Seri’s remarks will damage the image of the police. But there is overwhelming evidence that the image is very bad already. The Chulalongkorn studies and the Golden Pig affair offer the police and the Ministry a chance to admit that the force might have some problems. Only by recognising the problem can they start the process of reform. But that is not the reaction we are seeing.