Overseas observers have on occasion taken a special delight in painting our country as the last frontier, the wildest place on the planet.
And Papua New Guineans have been pictured in according with that image.
The idea that we are the inheritors of a most complex series of societies, hundreds of them each with their own communication systems and language, and with customs and traditions that defer from one valley to the next has some how escaped the notice of those commentators. Or perhaps we should put it another way.
Because of that diversity, probably unequalled in the world, we also face unique problems when it comes to taking the best of our inherited way of life and melding it with the best that the outside world has to offer.
It is a fact of life in PNG that the acceptable in one part of the country can be the intolerable in another.
Customs that determine the relationship between men and women, and the role of children, vary remarkably within our borders.
An so we have had and will continue to have a special sympathy for the honest, upright and hard working policemen and women of PNG.
At the same time, and in the belief that we are assisting the police hierarchy, we have always targeted and we will continue to target poor performance and arrogant policemen and women.
We will record unwarranted physical attacks by those tasked with upholding the laws that specifically bar such attacks.
And we will draw attention to the misuse of the vehicle to police drunk on duty, to police who bash their wives and to those other problems that from time to time affect the police force and the public image of its members.
These thoughts have been prompted by the welcome given by the police commissioner to the 2008 budget allocation for the force brought down in Parliament this week.
The commissioner has had a particularly testing introduction to the responsibilities of his position since been being appointed. The recognition by the Government of the importance attached to his men and women must indeed have given Commissioner Baki some relief and encouragement. The amount of that allocation is not trivial.
At K182 million, it represents recognition by the Government of the vital importance that law and order issues play in our country.
But later in the same edition of The National, we read of suspects allegedly escaping from the back of the police vehicle in Goroka.
These were not young stars arrested for loitering. One of the men had allegedly tried to hold up a woman teacher and her daughter in their home on a security-protected tertiary campus in the town.
Initially caught by the police, the man and two others escaped while been taken to the station for questioning.
How is that possible?
And on another page we found an even more disturbing story. These told of events in Lae, were a total of 37 detainees succeeded in escaping from police station.
There were apparently two incidents. In the first, a week ago today, 17 detainees simply made a sandwich of the lone police guard, pinning him between the cell door and the wall, and left the building.
Five were recaptured immediately; the others have yet to surface.
In the second incident last Sunday, 20 more escaped via unused and unlocked cell that had allegedly been awaiting repairs for more than a year. And last month, a further 19 detainees removed themselves from the cells during the Morobe Show.
The public is certainly entitled to ask what is going on at the Lae police station; referring to the open cell door incident last Sunday, a senior Lae police man said that the cell was “carelessly opened” by a duty constable who “was alleged to be under the influence of alcohol”.
We have a great deal of sympathy for the problems faced by the commissioner and his senior hierarchy.
We are aware of the huge effort underway to drag the
RPNG Constabulary back to being the respected body of old.
But at the same time the public has a right to be protected from criminals, and these incidents apparently involving unacceptable behaviour by police force members must stop.