Video of auxiliary police officer ‘scolding’ children in Penang goes viral

A video clip showing auxiliary police officers “scolding” two children in what appears to be Penang, Malaysia, has gone viral, with netizens expressing amusement at the unusual parenting tactic.

The 28-second video clip, posted by TikTok user @kushanalaiya on Nov 16, shows a boy and a girl with a man identified by Malaysian news outlet New Straits Times (NST) as their father.

An auxiliary police officer is seen speaking to the boy, with two other auxiliary police officers nearby, mounted on motorcycles.

The first auxiliary police officer speaks briefly to the boy with an expression of mock seriousness, then walks over to where he and his family are standing. The boy, looking frightened, moves closer to the man identified as his father.

One of the officers was quoted by NST as telling the boy not to be naughty, or they would “catch” him.

At the time of writing, the video’s dialogue appears to have been muted and replaced with a snippet from hip-hop artiste Kreepa’s track Oh No. The video has chalked up more than 6,300 likes, 100 comments and 320 shares.

Commenters lauded the officers for being good sports.

“If only the police could do patrols to scare kids who are playing (with) their phones...” one commenter said.

Another wrote: “There are officers who are friendly and love kids.”

TikTok user @kushanalaiya, or Ms Kusha, whom the NST report identified as the children’s mother, said in the comments that she asked the police officers to “help scare (the children) a bit” as they were misbehaving.

She added that the officers “weren’t harsh at all” and that, while the children were scared for a moment, the incident was “all in good fun”.

“I jokingly said the police would catch him (her son); as it turns out the police stopped and played along,” she wrote in response to another commenter.