Just as I was posting on another thread re the gay area in phuket it reminded me of a situation I encountered that in hind sight has made me ask the following question : Thai policemen - are they ALWAYS "on duty" or not?.

What I mean by this is that i believe that British police Constables ARE considered always "on duty" from a legal point of view re their warrant allowing them to make arrests etc even when "off duty" i.e outside of from their normal station working hours ( so if they are out for a night out with their wife and witness a crime they can ( and would be expected ) to intervene and if required attempt to make an arrest etc.

The reason I'm asking if this is also the Thai police officers is after seeing the following while sitting in a beer bar in the Phuket gay street.

So, about 2am and me sitting in an outside seat of a beer bar there and I witnessed a reasonably drunk American girl getting ejected from a bar after causing some form of trouble. Then about 15 minutes later she was then ejected from the club across the Soi after she and her friends had gone there ( apparently for lifting / stealing someone else's drink allegedly).

Meanwhile whilst all this had been going on I noticed two policemen sitting parked up for quite a long time in a pick up truck at the front gates of the Soi. I asked my Thai friend why they were there and he said something like "ohhh they're not working police but just paid by Soi to stay here and be the "police" if needed / to be seen to be there", which I took to mean they were actually moonlighting, being in effect security guards but in their police uniforms but whilst actually "off duty".

Anyway, so the by now very loud and very drunk American girl came falling out of the club, after being physically and forcibly ejected out the doors but the clubs security staff, whilst shouting the odds and doing the usual "get your hands off me, you can't touch me, I'm an American you know, don't you DARE TOUCH me" thing etc.

This went on for a few minutes and the "police" HAD to go over. They then made all the noises about "ok you go home NOW" but she was having none of it and started screaming at them too. One of the policemen then lost his temper and took out his handcuffs and shouted "ok now you go to jail" BUT it was very obvious when watching that they had actually no REAL wish or intention ( or hence my question - legal right ???) to actually arrest her !

I then asked to speak to her ( as I was one of the few farang sitting about at that time and they were very glad to say yes to my offer) and eventually, after 15 minutes of her screaming and yelling I reminded her that "she wasn't in Kansas anymore" so to speak and quietened her down enough to get her to fuck off home. The police man then came up and shook my hand and thanked me.

So, it made me wonder - were they simply moonlighting and hadn't ( and dont have ??) the authority to arrest someone if it's outside their appointed duty hours, or perhaps like all people maybe it was just that at 2am the last thing they wanted was a loud drunk American girl to deal with back at the station ( or perhaps they KNEW they couldn't take her to any station as they were't on duty ??

So, just purely out of interest might anyone have ant idea as to which it might be, i.e " Can a Thai police man arrest you 24/7 and even if he's outside of his station area etc?"

I'm guessing being Thailand the answer is of course yes, especially if there's enough money to be made from it, but I ust wondered about the actual legality of his powers ( just out of interest as I've no intention of putting this legal point to the test any time soon I should add !

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