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The Moving Finger by Lionel Wijesiri

The statistics of daredevil criminals getting away with impunity or not being caught at all is dangerously climbing by the day. Though there have been some effective police anti-crime swoops in the city, the campaign against crime, politically-backed or otherwise, cannot be sustained without disciplining the power deviants.

For gaining high moral ground, which is low indeed in public perception with grapevine stories making their wild rounds, the Prime Minister needs to do some senous housecleaning without delay. Perception can oftener be more lethal than reality. It was reported that he has already instructed the Police and the Security Forces to take immediate steps to repress violence and ensure security of the country. Responding immediately, Interior Minister John Amaratunga said that 500 additional troops are being called out to maintain law and order with the police in the Colombo city and suburbs.

Law and order, unless addressed urgently with concrete results on the ground, can derail what the Prime Minister has been able to achieve in the last few months or aims to achieve in the next few years.

The repeated occurrence of broad day-light killings will only lead the people in general to lose faith in the effectiveness of the state apparatus responsible for the enforcement of law and thereby its failure to maintain law and order in the society. In more simple words, it simply demonstrates the current level of lack of confidence of the people in the Police-the force primarily assigned to and responsible for enforcement of law in the country.

There are many reasons for such development. But the most prominent one for such ineffective functioning of the Police is its political uses by the past governments. The police was made bias and ineffectual and forced to work in the party line. However, we want it to be a matter of the past. We want that the present Government shall induce the police personnel as impartial enforcers of law through appropriate de-briefing.

Community support

One plausible way to educate and develop in the community the required attributes is for the Police to leverage upon and continually build on its community policing approach. This can be done through its strategically located Police Stations and police posts, which should adopt a sharper community focus under a one-stop service centre, providing an array of services such as faster responses to police calls and queries, speedier investigations, better counter service, closer relationships with residents in its own area of jurisdiction and many other pro-active functions.

When the Police Force provide the public with quality service, they, in turn, will be more forthcoming in assisting the police not only in its investigations but also to impending commission of an offence. If the public has faith in the police, it will be a stronger force to battle crime.

The Police must also engage entities such as schools, professional bodies, religious associations and non-profit making organisations in shaping the direction of the community in the coming years. They may also organise public events regularly in the form of police performances by their relative teams.

The relationship with the mass media also needs to be improved and strengthened and there should be high quality police educational programmes in the TV and radio (such as crime watch in western media).

Friends

There are those who argue that the police officers are products of the society, and the society, in many respects, is a violent one. But independent research organizations say there is no evidence to substantiate the claim that there is an increase in the use of force by police officers.

Pathmasiri Rodrigo, an active policeman with 26 years service says : "We in the police force are not enemies of the people. We know that we have professional responsibility to the people, and I don't think that any of our sensible members will purposely abuse any citizen. They know that their responsibility is to see to it that the common people, and the wider society are taken care of in the best possible way."

"Abusing citizens, especially innocent people, will create social tension which the police do not want. To get rid of the crime and violence is to build a firm and friendly relationship with the public, and common poor people make up a large part of that society," he adds.

Yvonne Weerasekera, working in a non-governmental organisation aiming to protect the rights of poor people here, is concerned about the long-term effects of these incidents on the relationship between the police and the society in general.

"If we reach a situation where our common people have no confidence in the police as a result of their attitude towards the society, then the level of cooperation which should exist on both sides will not be there, and that will certainly have some negative impact on law and order in the society," she says.

Part of the solution, she adds, is that police officers need to be trained in issues such as conflict resolution

Amal Fernando, another NGO advisor agrees. "I don't see things changing with the police if they are not properly trained in areas that will help them to deal with the public. Something will have to be done to bring some decency and common sense to the police force," he says.

Meantime, the common man-in-the-street is confident, that if the police is properly reformed and restructured then they could regain the glory of the past and be proactive to the major public demand, which is the restoration of law and order in the country.

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