After waiting for some time, we finally heard encouraging news coming from the National Police that they at last moved against police generals suspected to be behind case tampering involving potentially millions of dollars in tax bribes.

The National Police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri removed last week Brig. Gen. Edmond Ilyas from his post as Lampung Police chief and transferred him to a non-line-management position at headquarters. The move, however, came too little, too late.

It's too late because it took some time for the police to go after the generals implicated in the case.

It's too late especially if we compare it with the move taken by the finance minister who immediately fired Gayus Tambunan, the tax officer at the center of the Rp 28 billion ($3.08 million) tax bribery scandal, while suspending 10 of his superiors soon after the case emerged.

It's too little because the other general named in the case tampering case, Brig. Gen. Raja Erizman, is still untouched. Raja, who replaced Edmond as financial crimes director when the later was moved to Lampung, is said to be responsible for unfreezing Gayus' bank account. According to former National Police chief detective Comr. Gen. Susno Duadji, the first person uncovering the scandal, this money was then distributed to a number of parties, including police officers.

There are already concerns that the police might limit the pursuit of this case tampering to lower level police officers such as those already named as suspects in this case, who are all holding lower positions, so far.

We question if the police would really go deep into the case, especially if this involved higher ranking police officers.

But what worries us is the possibility that this tax case tampering by the police is just the tip of an iceberg. It is no secret that many high-ranking police officers would earn more than their official income by moonlighting and bad practices, and not from their salaries.

And it is even more saddening to learn about possible bad practices by higher-ranking officers demanding "contributions" from their subordinates, who would then be compelled to find even illegal ways to raise this money. Susno revealed that these bad practices stopped for a while when Sutanto was National Police chief.

The core of the problem is that there is no credible institution able to supervise the police. True, we have the National Police Commission, which is supposed to control the police, but everyone knows that this commission has no teeth and therefore no bite. Worse, it lacks credibility.

The only institution now able to control the police is the presidency as the police are an independent body under the President. But we cannot expect the President to carry out day-to-day oversight functions. Without a proper control and supervision system, we cannot expect our police to abandon bad practices. Without any proper control system, even a good and deep reform would not stay in place or be effective for long. So who will police the police force? And who will force the police to take notice of this?

There are surely several alternative ways to install a credible control and supervision system for the police.

One is by empowering the existing National Police Commission by amending the law governing this commission. After that, we need to recruit credible people to be its members.

Another way would be to make a more drastic move by placing the police under the home affairs minister and provincial governors. This way, the representatives of the executive – the minister and governors – could devise better systems to supervise the police, and would be accountable to the public.

Of course, each possible system has pluses and minuses. What is needed is to pick the best system that would lend credibility to the police by cleaning up existing ill-practices and improving their services to the public. In the end and one way or another the police have to be accountable to the people. We cannot expect the police to police themselves any longer.