President Prabowo Subianto must immediately replace Indonesia’s police chief and initiate sweeping reforms to salvage his government’s legitimacy.
With every fresh instance of police brutality, such as the deliberate ramming and killing of a protester, Affan Kurniawan, a ride-hailing driver, by a police tactical vehicle during mass demonstrations in Jakarta on Thursday (August 28), Prabowo’s administration bleeds credibility. If these abuses continue unchecked, it won’t be unruly mobs or opposition politicians that delegitimize the president, but the unchecked violence and corruption festering within the National Police itself.
The footage from the August demonstration, along with similar scenes just days earlier of uniformed officers mercilessly clubbing high-school protesters outside parliament, reveals not a few bad apples but a culture of impunity entrenched at every level of the force. Far from being an institution of public service, Indonesia’s police have become a symbol of unchecked power, politicisation, and institutional decay.
The violence is no longer exceptional; it is expected.
A Brutality Without Borders
Police violence in Indonesia is not a sporadic outburst—it is systemic. In December 2020, six members of the now-banned Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) were shot dead by police under murky circumstances. Despite public outrage, the case never made it to court. Two years later, in October 2022, the excessive deployment of tear gas inside Malang’s Kanjuruhan Stadium, where the exits had been locked, sparked a stampede that killed 133 spectators, including children. Only two junior officers faced token punishment.
According to KontraS (The Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence), police were responsible for at least 814 acts of violence in the past year alone, including torture, fatal shootings, and assaults both on citizens and fellow officers. The culture of violence appears embedded from the street to the station.
In West Kalimantan, a police precinct chief, caught on video, beat his subordinate for failing to prepare a Zoom meeting. In Tangerang, Banten, a college student was strangled by a police officer during a peaceful protest. In West Sumatra, a fruit seller was tortured over an unproven motorcycle theft; his wife’s pleas for justice were ignored. In Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi, three officers killed two university students during a demonstration in 2019. Internal disciplinary action followed—but not a single criminal charge.
Such violence is rarely met with serious consequence. Accountability, if it exists at all, is either internal or cosmetic.
A Culture of Impunity and Corruption
The Indonesian police have consistently ranked among the country’s most corrupt institutions. A 2017 survey by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) revealed that more than 35% of respondents who filed police reports were asked to pay a bribe. In 2022, Transparency International again listed the police alongside the judiciary and local government as the three most corrupt arms of the state.
At the top, corruption is no less brazen. In 2021, convicted businessman Djoko Tjandra testified that he bribed Inspector General Napoleon Bonaparte and Brigadier General Prasetijo Utomo to remove his name from Interpol’s red notice list. While these two were brought to trial, they remain exceptions. The PPATK (Indonesia’s financial intelligence unit) has documented dozens of police generals with assets far exceeding their legal income—some in the trillions of rupiah. Not one has been formally investigated.
This lack of scrutiny is no accident. Police officers rarely investigate fellow officers, especially senior ones. The KPK, once a fearsome anti-corruption body, is now run by a retired police general, himself subordinate to the very generals whose assets remain unexamined. Even KPK investigators are often seconded from the police, creating a feedback loop of mutual protection.
Corruption is not just tolerated; it is institutionalised. From street-level traffic bribes to multi-billion-rupiah scandals, corruption is the currency that oils the machinery of the state.
The Political Police
After the fall of Suharto in 1998, police were separated from the military in the hope that they would evolve into a civilian institution rooted in the rule of law. That hope has not materialised.
Each successive president has not only failed to reform the police, but has also deepened their political entanglements. President Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, in 2001, was unable to remove Police Chief Surojo Bimantoro. The force simply refused. It was a constitutional crisis in miniature, and a turning point. From that moment forward, the police became a power unto themselves.
Under President Megawati Soekarnoputri, the bond between politics and policing grew stronger. Police Chief General Da’i Bachtiar, renowned for his intelligence and loyalty, led the institution during a time of perceived success against terrorism. But behind the scenes, police were increasingly deployed for electoral advantage. In the 2004 elections, police officers in Central Java were caught on record working to ensure a victory for Megawati’s PDI-P party.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) briefly attempted to install reformists, such as Gen. Sutanto, but failed to see it through. Instead, the police were drawn back into political operations, notably in the controversial prosecution of KPK chairman Antasari Azhar.
Under President Joko Widodo (Jokowi), police became an indispensable tool for quelling dissent, controlling narratives, and dismantling independent oversight bodies. Jokowi’s administration oversaw the systematic weakening of the KPK and relied heavily on police to suppress protests, whether by students, street artists, or civil society groups. Reports of sexual violence, such as the 2021 child abuse case in Luwu, were ignored.
In the 2024 presidential election, the police’s entanglement in politics reached a new level of public consciousness. Officers were frequently seen restricting opposition campaigns, harassing dissenting voices online and offline, and overseeing electoral procedures with alarming partiality. Civil society organisations and journalists documented uneven enforcement of protest permits, disproportionate scrutiny of Prabowo’s opponents, and even informal pressure on bureaucrats and community leaders to support the ruling coalition.
So widespread was the perception of police partisanship that Indonesians began referring to the police as Parcok—Partai Coklat, or the “Brown Party,” a satirical nickname reflecting both the brown colour of the police uniform and their perceived loyalty to the incumbent regime. It was a public verdict: the police were no longer enforcers of the law but participants in the political game.
Now, under Prabowo, himself a former general with deep links to the military and police establishment, reform seems less likely than ever. But it is all the more urgent. If even electoral legitimacy is policed into being, then democracy itself is on borrowed time.
Can Reform Still Happen?
Reforming the Indonesian police is no longer a matter of technical governance. It is the central political challenge of the republic. No meaningful democratic development is possible without an accountable, impartial police force.
Yet the obstacles are formidable. Police reform requires more than rhetoric. It demands the establishment of independent oversight bodies with prosecutorial power to investigate misconduct; the mandatory declaration and public verification of assets for all officers above a certain rank; and a clear institutional separation from political structures, including a formal prohibition on active officers participating in political parties. Reform also necessitates the appointment of civilian leadership in key investigative and auditing roles, as well as the strengthening of independent institutions, particularly the judiciary and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), which have been systematically undermined.
So far, no president has demonstrated the courage or independence to pursue this agenda. President Prabowo, with a history of human rights allegations and a power base rooted in the security apparatus, is even less likely to embrace reform. Yet he must.
If he fails to act, every new act of police brutality will not just harm the victims, it will chip away at the legitimacy of his rule. Indonesia cannot afford to let its democracy rot from the inside out.
The task is monumental. But the alternative is already visible: a state where uniforms speak louder than laws, and where justice, like safety, remains a privilege for the powerful.
