Better training, better police force
Because of lack of training?Photo: STAR
NO matter what former and present police officials may say in defence of the force's actions, integrity, dutifulness, communication skill, professional competence, training standards, personal commitment, inter-personal relationship, personal and professional honesty and so on, public perception continues to be something they must worry about. A great deal needs to be done to improve the image of the police and thereby earn the respect of the common people. By common people, I mean a small time street vendor, a rickshaw-puller or a farmer, who hardly get respectful treatment from the police. They are verbally and physically abused and intimidated at random by a constable for no reason at all. Police personnel on patrol show no compunction while squeezing a taka or two out of the poor vendors for sitting on the sidewalk. They kick a rickshaw-puller for being slow in moving away from a busy road. Our reaction is, if they have violated any law then book them as per country's law but who authorised police personnel to take money from them or kick a human being who happens to be a poor rickshaw-puller? No, please just do not brush these aside as stray cases, because in any civilised country the police personnel taking money would land in jails. And our policemen would not dare kick the chauffer of a rich man even for running over a man on the street. This mindset must change. Police personnel must learn to respect a poor man on the street, who is breaking his back to earn an honest living. If they find his poverty an excuse to intimidate him, they will soon drive him to the underworld. Learn to respect poor, helpless people, as they are the citizens of the country and entitled to all the rights. Unfortunately, when police personnel are expected to be working side by side with the honest and law-abiding citizens in apprehending criminals, they are mostly found to be doing exactly the opposite. Even after all the oath taking and sermons from the high-ups, police-criminal networks exist in most areas to thwart attempts taken by honest officials to wipe them out. The network becomes more vicious and ruthless when corrupt politicians give them shelter for their personal gains. Stories abound concerning sincere officials getting transferred to remote areas for being proactive in catching criminals, thanks to those corrupt, anti-state politicians and corrupt police officials. Some recent and past incidences concerning police in action and the rise in criminal activities across the country have been scrutinised below for better insight. We may start with the question…does police training teach policemen to catch an armed criminal by wrapping their arms around him, just as wrestlers do in a fight? We don't know how the training goes, but we have seen to our utter bewilderment how a number of policemen have been killed when they went too near criminals armed with a handgun or a knife. One officer was killed in Tejgaon industrial are some years back when he tried to catch a killer with his bare hands, though he had his service pistol in his holster. As the officer had wrapped his arms around the killer the latter brought out his own gun and shot him point blank. The latest incident happened in Bhairab. When a junior officer (SI) went to catch a knife-toting criminal with his bare hands, the criminal stabbed him to death. Incidentally, the same criminal had stabbed two policemen right in front of the SI, but instead of shooting him down instantaneously the SI had put his arms around the killer to subdue him. The killer did what any killer would do, but did the SI do the right thing? The details of the sad story go like this. Two policemen had seated the criminal between them on a motorbike but they had not searched his body for any concealed weapon. The cops had to pay for the stupidity. At one stage, the criminal brought a knife out, stabbed both the cops and tried to flee. The SI had witnessed the grim drama from behind and ran to apprehend the knife-wielding criminal with his bare hands. He paid with his life for the unprofessional act, and we wonder why he had to do so when the killer had a lethal weapon in hand. It seems policemen in this country would rather give their own lives instead of taking those of hardened criminals armed with lethal weapons. Is it for the love of the criminals or is it simply foolhardiness? Police officials would know best. But as far as our knowledge goes, nowhere in the world a policeman would do that when confronted with an armed criminal. He would draw his gun, warn the criminal of dire consequences if he moved an inch; ask him to lay down the gun or the knife and then order him to lie flat on his chest with arms akimbo. The Bhairab incident also reveals many loopholes that exist in the way the police operate in this country. It has been reported that the cop killer Mamun was a known thug in the locality, and was a drug addict too. In a small township like Bhairab, everybody knows everybody, hence we may conclude that the police also know each and every criminal in the area. So, they must have known Mamun too. But the puzzling question is, how could Mamun go about doing all sorts of criminal activities all these years? If he was a hardened criminal then why didn't police issue arrest warrant and launch special operation to catch him with the help of the people? This would have saved the life of the young SI. And the way police handled the JMB arrestees and live grenades in Gazipur makes us ponder once again about the standards of training they get.
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