Reading And Inept Forensics

**Update: Kino just called, and they found a copy of If Chins Could Kill! Huzzah! It'll still take a month to get here, but hey I'll wait.

First things first: I'm mobile again. My leetle white box o' joy was delivered to me at about elevenish, and at half the expected price! I didn't have time to celebrate however, as I had to rush for an important work appointment in Menara Celcom at lunchtime. This was after persuading some colleagues to pick me up from KLCC where I managed to join the spirit of National Reading Month by getting Neil Gaiman's book on Douglas Adam's Hitchiker's Guide Series, Don't Panic and trying to reserve If Chins Could Kill (Bruce Campbell's biography, which sadly as I just found out is unavailable). I figured that even with the list of unread books I still have (Stephenson's Necronomicon, Dr Persaud's From The Edge Of The Couch) a couple or two more won't hurt. Then there's my Discworld collection to complete, The Sandman...Clive Barker's Abarat..oh the humanity! I can just see my money vanishing in huge puffs of smoke!

By the way, by now you'd have noticed that I have very few American writers in my list. A side-effect of my pseudo-anglophilic tendencies? I still drink teh o limau, mind you.

Anyway, before I go to the review of King Arthur (later entry) I'm just going to say how disappointed I am with the Malaysian Police, in their handling of Nurul Huda's rape and murder. Three whole rolls of photographic evidence down the drain because of a mechanical error? And yet the rest of the Malaysian populace subscribes to the media exercise that is 999 because it satisfies their voyeuristic urges, when anyone with half a brain can see how blatantly inefficient their handling of forensics is. Score one for our civic-conscience, and give ourselves a pat on the back why don't we.

This is why we need digital cameras in our police force. Granted, they can fail too. But they also give us a preview of our shots, instead of having to wait several hours for a roll of film to be processed. Those hours can mean the difference between catching a perpetrator and having him get off scot-free. Plus, if a digital camera doesn't work, it's readily apparent. I have no idea how old the Nikon in question was, but I have a feeling the so called error was simply incompetent handling/storing of the equipment.

So now the evidence (even of the autopsy) is gone, save for several shots the officer in question took with a personal camera. How does this impact Nurul's case? Definitely not for the better, that I can say. I wouldn't want to be the one telling this news to her parents, no sirree. How many more cases of mysterious errors must happen, or does it take a Minister's son or daughter to die before we clean up our woefully inadequate forensics team?

And please, lay off the VCD/DVD sellers. Try and catch some real criminals for a change.