BANGKOK -- Thailand's police have suffered another blow to their reputation from the release of a video that appears to show a man dying in custody with a plastic bag over his head. But the deadly interrogation method is not the work of just one rogue officer, according to retired senior members of a force that Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha had pledged to reform after he staged the 2014 coup.
The video, which leaked last month and went viral, drawing 3.6 million views, allegedly shows 24-year-old Jeerapong Thanapat, who had been arrested in Nakhon Sawan, 250 km north of the capital, on suspicion of selling methamphetamine pills, suffocating to death as officers demanded 2 million baht ($60,000) for his freedom. The superintendent of the station, Col. Thitisan Utthanaphon, nicknamed "Joe Ferrari" for his sports car collection, was later arrested.
