Islamabad : It is widely believed that the police are considered responsible for the prevention and detection of crime. In order to achieve this objective, modern police forces around the world employ multiple strategies focusing on both aspects of policing (Prevention and Detection).
Experts argue that the success of police depends equally on addressing both aspects – prevention and detection. An increase in property-related crime is generally attributable to poor prevention efforts by police whereas an increase in personal crimes may include factors beyond police remit including but not limited to poverty levels and related social phenomenon. This implies that if there is a consistent pattern of an increase in property-related crime in an area, police can be held directly responsible for not taking active measures that are effective to address this problem.
“Modern police forces adopt a number of strategies and techniques for prevention of street crimes. This includes community participation and realignment of its resources (human and technical) under an overarching strategy. Some successful strategies were modeled on theoretical frameworks like Broken Windows Theory integrated with Composite policing in some developed countries. Sometimes, an intelligence-led policing model was adopted. Some have employed Deterrence and Rational Choice frameworks focusing on Situational Prevention. However, in almost all frameworks, some common principles of crime prevention are generally employed that includes; Target Hardening, Target Removal, Access Control, Surveillance, Environmental Change, Rule Setting, Reducing the Means, Reducing the Payoffs and Deflecting offenders,” said in an international concept of policing to counter street crimes.
Police leadership is responsible for designing the crime prevention strategies after a thorough analysis of the crime patterns in local areas and identifying hot spots in local communities. This entails providing direction, guidance, and a vision but unfortunately in Pakistan, crime prevention is left to junior police officers. Resultantly, crime prevention ends up being equated to only picketing and patrolling which in most cases has no effect on prevention of crime because of ineffective and unplanned patrolling as most of the station house officers (SHOs) are unaware about the basics, importance, real sense, and strategical requirements of the patrolling. Moreover, police have a habit of deflecting public expectations by citing manpower shortages, lack of training, technical resources which may be necessary contributory factors for poor performance but not sufficient enough to justify the lack of effective crime prevention measures in their jurisdictions. It is a systemic problem of police in Pakistan that is exacerbated by minimal or no progress on devising strategies for crime prevention that may serve as guidance for police officers on the ground and also align the resources and manpower accordingly. Senior Leaders must be held to account if these are not in place and if in place fail to consistently meet public expectations.
This, probably, is for the first time that the crime rate of the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad has mounted alarmingly by the day.
The unprecedented increase in street crimes, where criminals are attacking innocent and helpless citizens in broad daylight with impunity has created a sense of fear and uncertainty.
Unfortunately, the police, both in Rawalpindi as well Islamabad are still in a state of denial about the situation. We are talking about this upsurge in crime rate in twin cities on the basis of the reported number of cases. The fact that the police in both cities, evidently, are trying their best to show the lesser number of crimes simply by not registering the ‘First Information Reports' (FIRs) for which people approach them and keep it too simple, unofficial ‘Reporting’, so that those should not reflect in the official records.
The police bosses seem not ready to face realities and are generally believing in the picture being portrayed by the Station House Officers (SHOs) who are actually the main culprits, both in failing to control crime in their areas as well as presenting grossly manipulated statistics of crime in their respective police station jurisdictions.
The situation only shows how strong this traditional ‘Thana Culture’, the infamous ‘specialty’ of the Punjab province has become. The officers of the PSP (Police Service of Pakistan) cadre, who took over their positions as the Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) after getting out of the Academy and later from the Police Training College, remain naïve about the ground realities. They are cleverly led to the unbreakable web these SHOs have woven over the decades, especially over the last three decades when they got strong political backing too in addition to their own authorities.
This ‘Thana Culture' is getting stronger and stronger and the SHOs are enjoying power to switch a complainant into accused against heavy extortion.
What the top bosses of the forces, right from the Tehsil level to district, division, and province, needs to learn is that the performance and efficiency of the police force, which is actually on the ground to combat and fight crime and criminals could not be enhanced by issuing notices or warnings alone. There is a lot more required and that includes regular inspections of police stations and listening to the aggrieved directly.
The officers of both the major cities, responsible for fighting against street crimes, believe that the state of affairs is manageable and police forces are trying to control the situation. They believe that crime situations are not so bad which are depicted.
