A man has claimed that he was injured by a group of plainclothes police officers after he flipped the identification card of one officer who was taking down details from him.
Mr Lim Chin Huat, 40, a businessman has filed a police report on Saturday, 4 April, against the group of officers after sustaining multiple injuries from their actions.
Complaint’s story of what happened – The details below are similar to the police report submitted by Mr Lim.
According to Mr Lim, he was drinking with a group of about 8 friends at a pub, “Yang Gui Fei”, located at Level 3 of Hotel Rendezvous on Thursday, 2 April, when a group of about 8 plainclothes police officers entered the place at 1.30 am in the early morning of Friday to conduct spot check.
The officers had their ID tags over their necks but they were turned inwards, said Mr Lim
When 2 or 3 of the police officers came to their table and asked for their identity cards, Mr Lim tried to ascertain the identity of the police officers who were conducting the spot-check but the officers refused to identify themselves.
However, Mr Lim still cooperated and surrendered his identification card to to the police officers despite not being shown the ID cards.
The police officers then started asking Mr Lim’s group for their contact numbers after they had recorded the details from their NRICs. While doing this, one of the officers kept pointing at Mr Lim, which led Mr Lim to ask for his name once again.
The police officer mumbled his name which Mr Lim could not decipher clearly. Mr Lim then asked the police officer to write down his name for him but the officer refused to do so. Instead he told Mr Lim to write it down himself if he wanted to.
Mr Lim asked for a piece of paper from the office, who had a stack of papers in front of him, but the officer declined to give any to Mr Lim. Mr Lim thus had no choice but to take a serviette to write the name down.
According to Mr Lim, he reached out and turned the name tag of the police officer around to see the officer’s name. At this point, the police officer’s colleagues shouted at Mr Lim, saying that he was not allowed to touch the ID.
Mr Lim said that he quickly apologised and said that he was not aware that he was not allowed to do this.
According to what Mr Lim recalled, the officers made obvious eye contact with each other and started restraining his arms, without any warning given and he was unaware why they were doing that. There were also no instructions given by the police officers to him of what to do next, whether he should squat down or place his hands anywhere.
The police officers proceeded to pin him down to the floor and Mr Lim landed on his right-cheek. Mr Lim’s arms were pushed to the back and had his hands handcuffed.
According to Mr Lim, the officers surrounded him and applied heavy force to his arms and kept shouting, “Don’t move!”, even though he was not moving at all.
While he did not struggle during the arrest, the police officers slammed their knee cap on his face repeatedly, and as a result, Mr Lim bled profusely from his head.
Only when someone shouted, “Bleeding already!”, did the officers stop what they were doing to Mr Lim. The person who shouted is believed to be a bystander.
The police officers then held Mr Lim tightly on his arm and forced his head to be lowered. They then held Mr Lim up forcefully to stand up and dragged him out of the pub and into a lift. Mr Lim’s friends who were with him were denied access to the lift to accompany Mr Lim.
As they were heading towards the police car, one of the officers slammed Mr Lim’s head onto the car bonnet (see the below photo).
In the video below, Mr Lim’s friends recorded the scene where the police officers wanted to put him into the police car but he refused to do so as he does not trust the officers anymore. Mr Lim called out to his friends to call his lawyer and said he wanted to go to the hospital instead.
According to Mr Lim, he told the paramedics who arrived at the scene with the ambulance that he was beaten by the police, but Mr Lim said he understands that the paramedics were powerless to do anything outside of their job scope.
Injuries sustained from the incident
Photos of the injuries substained during the scuffle with the police officers.
The hospital discharge record show that Mr Lim suffered injuries to his head and had a fracture to his nasal bone.
Although his arm was fractured, the hospital did not include this in the report as they said that it would only be available in a detailed medical report which is available to investigators.
Mr Lim said in Chinese, “The police cannot be trusted, there is no justice.”
“The police does not follow proper procedure”
He added, “This is not what I expected the police to be.”
He also said that the police did not show any concern when he was bleeding.
Mr Lim is believed to have been charged by the police for disorderly behavior by speaking loudly in public and for assaulting a police officer for tugging at the lanyard of the officer, which Mr Lim denies.
TOC has written to the Singapore Police Force on the matter and will include their response if or when they reply.
Writer’s note – On the point about presenting two sides of the story, out of all the enquiries which TOC has sent so far to the SPF, most are left unanswered even after several months and even if the police do reply, they would say that the information requested is private or ask TOC to read from what has been published.
