The Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM) doesn’t exactly have the best track record recently when it comes to integrity due to some bad apples in their ranks who unfortunately overshadow the good, honest police personnel.
One Singaporean woman might have unfortunately stumbled upon these bad cops.
Taking to the MY SG Road Trip – Your Malaysia Road Trip Guide Facebook group, Irene Teo shared how she was allegedly tricked into using an illegal lane at the Immigration and Customs checkpoint of the Johor Bahru Eastern Dispersal Link Expressway (EDL), where she was then allegedly extorted out of RM500.
This image is for illustration purposes only.
She wrote, “Hi, we just got extorted out of money from the policemen in JB. He asked us for RM600 but we only had RM500 with us. He said he would do us a favour and that RM500 is okay too.”
“We were on the way back to Singapore from JB and we were waiting at the car lane on the EDL towards the Immigration and Customs stop in JB. Suddenly, a few policemen opened the lorry lane on the left and asked us to drive on the lorry lane, which they opened for us.”
Irene explained that they were not the only Singaporean cars that were gestured to use the lorry lane
“We followed another Singaporean car and it led us to a deserted side road beside the Customs area. When we looked around, we were surprised to see only 2 cars including us in this deserted area. A policeman in uniform then radio-called his colleague over and a policeman came riding on a motorcycle and asked us when we used this route to go back to Singapore,”
“We told him the policemen opened the lorry lane and asked us to proceed, and that we didn’t know it led us to the unauthorised counters,” she added.
This image is for illustration purposes only.
Suddenly getting an uneasy feeling, she believed that she had allegedly been tricked by the police officers
“Then, we immediately felt unsafe and knew the policemen were in cahoots. The police asked the driver for their driving license and passport, and he said he would ‘help’ us to go back to the car lane to the Immigration and Customs area. In return, he asked us for RM600 as this is fine for driving to an unauthorised lane back to the Immigrations and Customs area,”
“He said that otherwise, we have to go to the office and lodge a report and we would still have to pay the fine at the office and our data would be recorded in the police system, which is not good for us. We told him we could go to the office to pay the fine officially but he simply ignored us, and one of our passports was with him. After paying him RM500, he then guided us back to the car lane by blocking the other cars,” she shared.
Taking this as a lesson to be extra careful even with the uniformed authorities in Malaysia, she urged Singaporeans to do the same to prevent being scammed.
We genuinely hope that the authorities investigate this matter and take action against the officers involved.
What do you think about this? Do feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section.
Also read: SG Girl Shares How PDRM Officers Allegedly Asked for RM10k Bribe for Not Carrying Her Passport
