Given Singapore’s relative safety, we rarely see a police chase happen. They mostly involve car chases, one causing a dramatic crash at Tanjong Pagar in 2023.
Passers-by outside Aljunied MRT Station were treated to a police chase on foot, caught on video and circulating online recently.
Police Chase After Suspicious Man with Box at Aljunied
According to 8world News, the incident actually took place on 8 June, at around 5.20 pm.
Three police officers on patrol noticed a man dressed in white, with a white cap, and carrying a large white styrofoam box outside the MRT station.
Nope, nothing suspicious here.
The police evidently thought differently and approached the man. When the suspect noticed them moving towards him, he did the least suspicious thing by dropping the box and sprinting at full speed in the opposite direction.
From the video, he appeared to be running across a grassy field towards 52 Aljunied Road. The large box can be spotted by a tree.
The three officers gave chase at once, two being on camera initially and one appearing from off-camera a few seconds in.
Moving around the aforementioned tree, one of the policemen unfortunately took a tumble to the ground. Loud laughing could be heard from the passers-by spectating the police chase.
To his credit, he recovered quickly and got back in the chase.
Duty-unpaid Cigarettes Found in Styrofoam Box
The man in white, meanwhile, ran at such high speeds that he left the cap on his own head in the dust. Occasionally shooting a glance behind him, the suspect jumped a waist-high railing in one fluid motion and vanished from sight down the sidewalk.
One of the police officers hopped over the fence to give chase down 52 Aljunied Road while the other two officers stopped, perhaps to go back and secure the evidence.
Inside the abandoned styrofoam box, the police discovered a stash of smuggled duty-unpaid cigarettes and illegal health products. They handed the items over to Singapore Customs and the Health Sciences Authority (HSA).
Doing just about anything with duty-unpaid cigarettes, even possessing them, is a serious offence. It can carry a fine of up to 40 times the amount of duty and GST evaded or up to six years in jail. Or both if you’re particularly unlucky.
Netizens did not appear too pleased by the showing of the police officers. One joked by saying they all failed their 2.4 km run for their IPPT.
Other commenters suggested that the long pants of the police officers made it more difficult to run at full speed or climb fences. They advocated for the police to return to shorts.
Someone claiming to have served in the police force chipped in, saying that it wasn’t easy to run with all the gear on.
A simpler explanation could also be that it was merely some bad luck for the policeman who fell. After all, unlucky mistakes can happen if you’re sprinting full speed on uneven terrain.
It is unclear if the man in white has been caught since. Some say he is still running.