policing crimes

How do you find your police in your country? Although it is mostly based on person to person experience; the majority of the answer would be “not good”. Yes. This is the type of response that we generally come across. Then what should be done? Avoid or reform police? If we avoid them the problem will continue to be there and it will rather increase. Therefore we should include the “troublemaker” in our development or reform program. If we correct the police there will be no more trouble in future. It is so simple. When we consider police as a part of our social life then we would certainly like that our police are professional.
The philosophy of modern policing call for client oriented policing; community based policing, proactive policing. What is this then?
Community policing is:
l Designed to make crime control a collaborative effort/Multi disciplinary approach
l Taping community resources to share crime control efforts.
l Seeking to enhance crime control by engaging more powerful social control mechanism.
l A philosophy of client-oriented service delivery aimed at improving accountability and effectiveness by focusing on problem solving.
l A style of policing crimes with the help of citizens. Generating a feeling of, “All police are citizens with uniforms: All citizens are police without uniforms.”
l A policing system of the citizens, for the citizens, and by the citizens.
Yes it is systems which inculcate for the sense of belongingness, the sense of ownership, the feeling of “weness”. But it does not call for a new organization, new laws, new budgets, and new people. It requires only the change in the style of policing. So simple! If we consider people’s participation in policing; not only in policing but also in other State machineries, our jobs would become very easy, effective, and cost effective. We have experienced this result in the forestry. The conflicts in between the forest officials and community members are gone, and the forests have become denser.
Although many senior police officers still do not believe in this philosophy Nepal police is inching towards cultivating this kind of culture. I was happy to deliver a talk on “Policing crimes through community participation” to the students of Centre for Development Studies, National College, in Kathmandu today. I had had the similar opportunity of delivering lecture to the LLM students of Kathmandu School of Law on the issue of “Crimes against women and children” on 10 Apr 2005.
What I feel is there is a need for a Centre for education on the issues of crime and criminals, community safety and security, national security, business security, industrial security, bank security, personal security etc etc. If we establish such institutions the safety and security of the citizen and country will be more effective.