SINGAPORE — Not only were police officers attending to the riot in Little India “grossly outnumbered”, they also had difficulties communicating with one another because the walkie-talkie and mobile phone lines were jammed that night, the first senior officer at the scene told the Committee of Inquiry (COI) yesterday.

And despite acknowledging that he did not know how many officers there were at the scene of the melee, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Jonathan Tang Wenhao testified that manpower constraints explained why no arrests could be made early on.

Furthermore, his initial focus was on extricating the body of the worker pinned under the bus and then getting the stranded bus timekeeper and bus driver away to safety, added the leader of the Kampong Java Neighbourhood Police Centre officers on shift that night.

Indian national Sakthivel Kumaravelu, 33, was killed after being run over by bus driver Lee Kim Huat. His death preceded the riot, which ASP Tang was one of the first police officers to come face to face with.

Yesterday, ASP Tang, who has been with the Singapore Police Force since 2010, walked the COI through how he responded to the chaotic scenes involving the “very large crowd” that night, before he saw the officer overseeing the operations, his division commander Deputy Assistant Commissioner Lu Yeow Lim.

The mob crowding around the bus after the accident was “too large and noisy”, and were seemingly angry with the timekeeper, Mdm Wong Geck Woon, he said.

And having not seen the extent of Mr Sakthivel’s injuries or whether he was still alive, ASP Tang’s view was that it was “critical to ensure that the Singapore Civil Defence Force personnel could extricate the subject without any interference from the crowd in case medical attention was required”.

As he directed the auxiliary police officers at the scene to form a human barrier between the crowd and the SCDF officers, ASP Tang said the crowd continued hurling objects at the bus.

He assessed that the situation could develop into a “major public order incident” because the crowd was growing and becoming more “emotionally charged”, but instructed the five police officers around him not to make any arrests at that point so they could focus on facilitating the SCDF’s rescue efforts.

“Although the crowd was getting increasingly agitated and difficult to control, I still felt that my officers were relatively safe as the crowd’s anger was directed at the occupants in the bus,” he said, referring to Mdm Wong and Mr Lee. “I also felt that arrests would antagonise the crowd. In view of the lack of police manpower at the scene, I did not want the incident to escalate further as the small force of attending officers would have been unable to control the situation.”

ASP Tang also told the COI he considered dispersing the crowd by spraying them with water from the Red Rhino but was told it had no water.

As the situation deteriorated, he considered firing a “warning shot” with his revolver, although he decided against it, for fear of further agitating the crowd or the mob snatching his weapon.

He detailed how the crowd eventually turned “overtly aggressive” towards uniformed officers, pelting them with objects as they took cover between a fire engine and an ambulance. ASP Tang was also hit on the head and cut by a rock.

“I feared that we might be trapped and eventually overwhelmed by the rioters,” he said, explaining why he directed officers around him to seek shelter in the ambulance.

When asked about police officers’ protocol, training and equipment to deal with riots, ASP Tang testified that officers were not trained or equipped for such incidents, noting that the riot shields which all patrol cars carry cracked that night, while also demonstrating how the T-baton officers are armed with on patrol were “defensive” weapons.

When pressed by COI member Tee Tua Ba, who is also the former Commissioner of Police, about whether the difficulties with quelling the riot swiftly was down to a lack of officers or issues with the training and equipment, ASP Tang said: “Both play a part.”