An incident early in Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat's police career stayed with him and shaped his views on the importance of Singapore's approach to community policing.
He had to attend to a case where an old woman who lived alone had been dead for several days in a rented cubicle in Chinatown, but no one knew about it until the stench became unbearable.
He then uncovered cash and gold jewellery that the woman had saved up and tried to trace the next of kin to return these valuables. Several relatives turned up to make the claim, but none could say what they had done with or for the woman.
"It taught me that when members of a society are isolated, and if relationships were not built over time, we would run into long-term problems. And when people do not care for people around them, the police would have a hard time trying to maintain law and order," said Mr Heng.
He recounted the case in Parliament yesterday during the debate on commemorating 200 years of the Singapore Police Force.
Mr Heng, who joined the force in 1980 and served for 17 years, said he was very excited to be involved in the efforts to implement Singapore's change in policing strategy to a community policing system, where neighbourhood police posts (NPPs) were set up all over the island.
NPP officers conducted house visits, checked on the well-being of citizens, gave them crime prevention advice and encouraged neighbours to form neighbourhood watch groups, said Mr Heng.
He added: "Special efforts were made to nurture the community spirit. In the kampungs, people knew each other well. But when they relocated to HDB flats, they needed time to get to know one another, and to adjust to a new way of life.
"It was critical to build that community spirit among neighbours, to look out for one another, to look out for criminals on the prowl."
He was one of several former police officers in the House who, joined by other MPs, spoke in support of the motion to commemorate the bicentennial of policing in Singapore.
Chairman of the Workers' Party Sylvia Lim (Aljunied GRC), who was a police officer in the 1990s, wished officers of the SPF well, and added: "We should not think we have arrived, but strive for even higher standards."
Mr Patrick Tay (Pioneer) recalled the four years he spent with the Special Tactics and Rescue unit, which comes under SPF's Special Operations Command, and thanked the unit, which handles high-risk and highly armed criminals and criminal hostage situations, as well as the K9 unit, which provides specialised capabilities for tracking, detection and support to prevent and detect crime.
Mr Melvin Yong (Radin Mas) said that he first joined the SPF in 1995 and "served 20 wonderful years before retiring".
"Police work is challenging, not simply because the job of keeping Singapore safe and secure never ends, but also because most of the work that our police officers do daily goes unseen, often unknown, and unrecognised," he said.
In his speech, Mr Heng said that a key element in the recounting of the police's journey over the last 200 years by Mr Christopher de Souza (Holland-Bukit Timah GRC), who moved the motion, is the need to constantly adapt and innovate.
Mr Heng said: "Above all, it is critical that we continue to invest in our officers - the values that underpin their work, integrity, fairness, discipline, dedication, and as crimes become more cross-border, and sophisticated."
