Script at the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn yet again. I made a video here recently. I got a little passionate in that video about my thoughts on "Big Joke" sort of being assigned if you will to go after this whole kerfuffle, - kerfuffle is the wrong word - this travesty, tragedy associated with certain sex criminals here in Thailand. And let's also note that the offenders are foreign so, I think it's worth pointing that out. That said, every country has these problems, okay? As I said in my prior video, I think "Big Joke" is the perfect person to put on this. He is the exact kind of law enforcement officer I think that would be optimal to go after this kind of thing and I think it's being borne out, so. I say that after reading recent article from the Nation, that is nationthailand.com, the article is titled: Three Pattaya cops face disciplinary action over escape by German, American suspects. Quoting further: "Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn, Deputy Commissioner General of the Royal Thai police, said a former Chief of Pattaya police station, a deputy station Chief and the police officer in charge of the case would face disciplinary action for failing to observe regulations following the arrests of the foreign suspects."

So just as sort of an aside here, this is Big Joke's opening salvo is going after the police okay? For anybody that has any kind of history of reading the news in Thailand, this is not a usual occurrence, okay? We saw this a lot, a lot of these kind of tactics Big Joke would utilize when he was back in Immigration. We saw a number of Immigration Police who were put under investigation. Some of them even dismissed; some of them I believe even saw some criminal penalties associated with corruption, and again these same methodologies seem to be being applied in this context. So quoting further: "Surachate said the case has to be separated into two parts - the bribe allegation, which is being further investigated and the disciplinary probe which has been completed. Surachate said the disciplinary probe found that the unnamed policeman in charge of the case failed to follow two key regulations when a foreign suspect is arrested." Now it is worth noting in this video, go read that article, I am quoting excerpts here. A lot of good information over there on the Nation Thailand website, go check out that article in detail.

Quoting further: "Surachate said he has instructed the Pattaya Police station to urgently seek red arrest warrants from Interpol to be sent to Germany and the US, although he was not optimistic that Germany would agree to send a citizen back to Thailand to face charges." Here to tell you from personal experience, the US will. The US doesn't mess around with these trafficking and sex crime charges; the US is perfectly happy to send you on back to Thailand. Quoting further: "It was however hoped that the red warrant would prompt the German authorities to take legal action against him in Germany." As discussed in prior videos it appears and again this is just from what I have read about this whole thing, that one of these suspects truly kind of just landed and ran off; another one of these suspects was actually granted bail and then was told they were allowed to leave the country for some sort of business and then they just did not return and that's not unheard of. A lot of people out there like "why would they allow that?" Well one, you have always got to remember, and I can say this with I think a little bit of insight into the mind of a Judge on a personal level I will just leave it at that, but I don't think it's unfair to say that any Judge in a situation where there is some foreigner involved in a crime against people in their Community, one of the options being just completely removing that person from the equation entirely is not an altogether bad outcome.  That person would say well oh they skipped bail. Well they are never coming back to Thailand, are they? Yeah exactly. That in and of itself put itself in my mind is not a terrible outcome. Now that said, procedures need to be followed and the law must be enforced so I can understand why people take issue with it but I just think it is worth pointing out that “hey it is not an entirely terrible outcome to just not have that perpetrator, that victimizer of underage people in the community at all; them being just removed is a pretty okay outcome”, I think that's worth noting. Again, that said, the law needs to be enforced, and needs to be enforced fairly and properly so I get why that is not a good policy to have in terms of that's the procedure to use, I get that but okay not going to beat that point to death any further. But continuing though yeah, clearly what we're seeing is enforcement on this stuff is going to be taking much more seriously and another thing to bear in mind is that look at the end of the day in a sense, this person or these people that get into this situation, they never really come out of it because as they point out in this article, Interpol red notices get issued, I mean you're done. You may have gotten out of Thailand but one, you may be headed back and two, the charge is not going to go away. Again note, I think it is worth rereading that: "it was however hoped that the red warrant would prompt the German authorities to take legal action against him in Germany." And that is a possibility. Again it is going to be fact and case specific, case dependent, circumstantially dependent but it is possible to follow up a case in another jurisdiction and I would hope Law Enforcement somewhere else would be keen to do that. 

That said, I think the thing to take away from this video is again, "Big Joke" is a serious operator when it comes to law enforcement. This is not someone who you know is a just kind of a ‘do nothing’ person. This is a person that's proactive, they take action and they are going after this. This is a high priority. I don't think there's any question that it is a high priority here in Thailand and it is good to see that law enforcement is working vigorously to end this blight once and for all.