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Former Thai police captain speaks to UNT Dallas students

A group of University of North Texas at Dallas students has a much better understanding of the anti-government protests and disorder in Thailand, thanks to a former Thai police captain’s appearance before the class Nov. 20.

The head of Thailand’s military called for new elections a week later, and protestors have faced off with police at the nation’s major airports.

Professor Eric Coleman’s graduate class in criminal justice knows that the police departments in U.S. cities are localized and do not report to the president or governor. They learned that, unlike the U.S., Thailand—a country with a history of military coups—has a national police force that reports directly to the prime minister.

Sutham Cheurprakobkit is a professor of criminal justice at Kennesaw State University near Atlanta. Before coming to the U.S. 18 years ago, Cheurprakobkit—his students call him “Dr. C,”—was a cop for five years in Bangkok. “I was on the street for three years and I taught in the [police] academy for two years,” he said.

In a wide ranging discussion about differences between American and Thai law enforcement, students learned that the Royal Thai Police are very powerful because they control several different areas of the government.

In Thailand cadets spend four years in the police academy. In the U.S., academy training is between three and five months. “We were trained like in the army. We had to stay in the jungle, do survival training. We had to jump out of aircraft seven times,” said.
 
There are five sections or departments in Thai police stations: traffic, crime suppression, investigation, interrogation and support. The interrogation section is the toughest, he said.

“It’s a one-man-show position. You are in that for three years. When you are on duty you are the inspector. [When] anything happens—fire, murder, burglary, theft, you name it—you will be in charge of those cases. This is the job that all the officers want to stay away from.”

Cheurprakobkit told about one time when he had to work three days nonstop. He could handle it, he said, because he was only 23. “On the fourth day I had to take a suspect to the courthouse on my motorcycle.” (Another difference between the countries’ law enforcement is that Thai police officers have to furnish their own motorcycles.)

“You take suspects on your motorcycle?” the students asked in disbelief. Not usually and only for very minor offenses, “but they respect us. They would not do anything,” he explained. He further clarified that a department van took that suspect to court while he rode his motorcycle, which is the standard procedure.

“On the way to the courthouse—maybe five miles—I fell asleep three times on my motorcycle.” The traffic was so bad, fortunately, that he couldn’t drive fast. “The third time I fell asleep, I dreamed and I woke up. I felt so hot in here, on my chest,” he said gesturing.

Apparently while asleep, he ran into the soup pot of a vendor who was crossing the street. When he woke up, hot soup was all over his chest.

Out of 250,000 police officers, only a few are female, and all of them are in office support doing computer work. That seemed especially odd given that four of the five students in attendance for the guest lecture were female.

“That mainly is because of our culture,” Cheurprakobkit explained. “They have tried over 10 years to put female officers on the streets, but the women do not want to do that either.”

The Royal Thai Police have been on a path to modernization since he left the country. Civil rights are a relatively new thing in Thailand. They started observing Miranda-like rights roughly four years ago. “Before that you just do what you please. There were some bad apples.” As an example, Cheurprakobkit said prostitution is notoriously overlooked for the most part.

“Then the head guy would say, ‘Well, we have to make some arrests.’ They just do that every now and then—every six months—to show that they were serious about these vice activities.”

Cheurprakobkit said very few officers are engaged in police brutality. He cited that Thailand has recently started lethal injections instead of executing criminals by firing squad.

Thailand has some terrorism in the southern part of the country next to Malaysia. Asked how police treat suspected terrorists, he said that “in the past some officers would beat them. In theory, they should not.”

While there is still some corruption in the Thai police force, he said, and the commissioned officers rule over the other officers without accountability, there are some benefits that go with being a policeman.

“The people respect us—the one with the star [on his uniform]—the police officer. The young ladies all want to marry you,” he said, prompting the girls to start needling the lone guy in the class. “When you go to have lunch or dinner they will not charge you most of the time…if you are nice to people.”

Cheurprakobkit speaks Chinese too, “so I spoke with them in Chinese, and they loved me even more.”

Regarding the current political unrest in his homeland, Cheurprakobkit said “the police force is a separate entity and is not under the control of the military.  The military is under the Ministry of Defense.” However, he observed, “the current situation in Thailand has made the police become less popular.”

In the police academy, Cheurprakobkit graduated first out of 320 cadets. Every year the Royal Thai Police give one scholarship to a policeman to go to the U.S. to pursue higher education in criminal justice. More than 100 officers came to the U.S. on these scholarships. They all went back to Thailand, until Cheurprakobkit decided to stay.

“I am the first one—maybe the last one—to do this.” He had two choices. If it took him four years to complete his degree, he could go back and serve on the police force for eight years, or he could pay them back three times the value of his scholarship and stay in the U.S. “So I chose the second route.”

He was a police captain when he took the study-abroad scholarship after twice being skipped for promotion. His scholarship allowed him to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Afterward, he earned a Ph.D. at Sam Houston State University. He was an assistant professor in the criminology program at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin before moving to Georgia.

Asked if he were glad he stayed in the U.S., Cheurprakobkit answered, “Very glad.”

“My mom was sad, and she cried for like two years. Every time I called she would cry, so I called every three or four months. Now she’s so happy that I’m here. She knew it’s good for me to stay here.” He and his family go back to Thailand to visit their family every summer.

Coleman invited Cheurprakobkit to speak to his class as soon as he learned that he would be in Dallas. The two men have been friends since they met at Sam Houston State’s Leadership and Command College.

When asked what he wanted students to take away from their discussion, Cheurprakobkit said that it’s always good to see that the world is not so big, to see another perspective. “You learn from other systems. I learn a lot. And one of the best ways to do that is to go there and see because it doesn’t do justice just by listening to me or see pictures.”

Cheurprakobkit offered students a flyer on going to study in Thailand through Kennesaw’s study abroad program if they had an interest. “You go there and see you appreciate how much you have here and how different the systems are.”

The students agreed that if it were not for the $3,000 price tag, they would eagerly sign up to go.

Phyllis Hamilton, a graduate student in criminal justice from Dallas, said this guest lecture at the end of the semester was indicative of why she was going to Miss Coleman’s class. “We had some really good discussions. They were really a learning experience. I’m going to miss everybody. There was a camaraderie,” she said, “because we were a family.”

The UNT UNT Dallas operates under the authority of the University of North Texas in Denton, the state’s fourth largest university, and is a component institution of the University of North Texas System. The Campus currently offers junior-, senior- and graduate-level courses leading to bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The Campus will become freestanding and open as UNT Dallas, the city’s first and only public university, by 2010.

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