Kitty Justice: The Thai Solution for Police Parking Placard Abuse

Top brass at the NYPD usually (but not always) cast a blind eye toward police officers who show disregard for the city’s parking regulations. It’s a sharp contrast to the NYPD’s “broken windows” school of policing, which promotes aggressive enforcement against minor scofflaws (like my friend Katie who recently spent a night in the box for a supposedly unpaid off-leash dog walking summons).

Police in Bangkok, however, recognize that allowing officers to commit minor transgressions potentially leads to breakdowns in force discipline and more significant corruption. As such, they’ve developed a new form of punishment for officers who can’t seem to follow the rules. Can you imagine what NYPD Rant would have to say about this? The BBC reports:

Police chiefs in the Thai capital, Bangkok, have come up with a new way of punishing officers who break the rules — an eye-catching Hello Kitty armband.

The armband is large, bright pink and has a Hello Kitty motif with two hearts embroidered on it.

From today, officers who are late, park in the wrong place or commit other minor transgressions will have to wear it for several days.

The armband is designed to shame the wearer, police officials said.

“This is to help build discipline. We should not let small offences go unnoticed,” Police Colonel Pongpat Chayapan told Reuters news agency.

“Guilty officers will be made to wear the armbands in the office for a few days, with instructions not to disclose their offences. Let people guess what they have done,” he said.

Further offences would be dealt with using a more traditional disciplinary panel, he said.