| Welcome to Global Village Space

Friday, October 4, 2024

Pakistan desperately needs Police reforms

Pakistan has been promised reform in the police institutions for far too many times but no government implemented the changes making the institution's condition go from bad to worse.

I asked one of my colleagues, who is CSS aspirant this year which cadre will you join? Policing, he replied. Amazing you must be a brave man then. No, there is a wider margin to earn extra. Well, “extra” is something like “under the table”. It can be an individual’s character but to my surprise, it was the answer to some more aspirants.

In which direction as a nation, are we moving? Was a question popping up in my mind from that time? The other side is, it is the most hated segment of services by the general public. That bulky bellies and sweating bodies, gloomy faces wearing net of worries these alien police officers swirl all around in Courts.

Outside courts, they play God. Almost each to next investigation officer is of heart or blood pressure patient or is diabetic. The poor miserable creature! It is the lower ranks police strata which get “not enough budged” and are compelled to collect it by unfair means under undue political influence.

Few suggestions are here as to increase their pays. Provide them with family’s health insurance and special Quota in hospital admissions

They have a complaint that they have to run police errands on their own expense which is latter collected by the general public and that they are not free to discharge their duties. No one likes police and they don’t like the public either. The public has its own reasons, the police have their own. The public has contentions that they are rude, cruel, unjust and they take the bribe.

They spoil the case, evidence, and police dairies, they concoct stories, and they don’t do what they ought to do. They are puppets of mighty and wealthy people. Police is for high ups not for commons. They are not for our preservation they are in service of rich only. They are shady they are grey and even black.

They are supposed to impose law but they violate it, they must secure us but they rob us, they have to console us but they boil our tensions to the next level. The police department is an essential part of today’s States because we are living in police state. But this environment of mistrust even blame game has made it a cruel clown. We have to change this. We have useless police laws and implementation rules.

Read more: Police Service: Challenges & Reforms

This makes them subject to blackmailing of political and bureaucratic high ups that discourage them to ignore State laws and administration of justice because they take care of them and their families and their offices and daily provisions. It is said that they are at private payroll of this Mafia coz they have to run their homes and feed their families.

This all is the state’s responsibility but state is slumbering soundly. The state encourages them to generate their own revenue. We have legislations regarding police and policing but they are copy-paste of any other country whose ground realities, norms, culture and problems are different from ours, we have to reconsider social, psychological and economic conditions of our society while drafting laws and implementing them, in fact sanctions suits there where appropriate system exists and then anyone breaks them and then.

This environment of mistrust even blame game has made it a cruel clown. We have to change this. We have useless police laws and implementation rules

We must reform police so that the administration of justice may work properly. Police reforms are pedestal we need to stand upon. Only a peaceful society yields a prosperous generation. In order to become a prosperous nation. To redeem our self-respect among respected nations we have to reform our police by understanding their core issues so that police may work properly, justice may serve adequately in time.

A few suggestions are here as to increase their pays. Provide them with the family’s health insurance and special Quota in hospital admissions. Make private or public educational institutions bound to give their children admission at a half fee.

Read more: PTI presents its long-awaited police reforms package: will it work?

Professionally 

1) Celebrate police day and acknowledge their services by giving them awards and bonuses frequently.

2) Media campaign should be designed for curbing distance between police and public

3) Pay special heed to their moral education and design programs quarterly.

4) Make the whole “Zimnis system” computerized and made such special software that once any entry made it cannot be altered or added between.

5) Make their entrance and exit at police station biometric.

6) CCTV cameras on the entrance, and lockups. With monitoring team consisting of any public committee or official body on a daily basis.

7) Give each police station enough budgets to fulfill their energy and petrol needs whether for patrolling or for Court’s dates or raid whatever. So that, No police officer shall have to pay from his own pocket or anyone else’s.

Read more: Police Reforms: Issues, Effects and a Way Forward

Or

Give qualified petrol pump a tender to fill fuel in police vehicles all over the province and keep proper account of it. Police itself has not to pay for it and the government may give petrol budged to petrol pumps directly or in any other appropriate way.

8) Give each police station proper stationary, equipment, furniture and needed electric appliances, as they had to provide themselves with these articles often personally.

9) Put cameras on their uniforms.

10) Make the whole investigation scientific and technical.

11) Special training and implementation of forensics tools and methods should be held and applied. In fact, make it mandatory.

12) Crime scenes shall be examined scientifically and no manual account should be entertained.

13) Amend all police rules and laws, especially clauses relating to revenue generation.

14) Recruitments shall be on merit and as a qualification; specialization should be done in Law, Sciences and accounting.

It would be a good step if each police station shall contain at least one sociologist and one psychologist. The reward system on the basis of cases filed and convictions given seems not a good idea. We should understand the police department and policemen. No authority becomes their voice in Assemblies.

They even don’t speak for themselves. Respect their professional duties, obey their legal orders and cooperate with them. We should acknowledge them as a human being and they also are family men. They also should be humane towards the public and rock towards their misusers.

Read more: Myth of Police Reforms

Police is an essential feature of the administration of justice and sanction. We have to solve the root problem first as you know what is a philosophy of punishment in a Ryasat e Madina? Where the State provides its citizens with basic necessities does not restrain to the “roti, kapra and makan”.

It includes education, health, and respectable subsistence means, sprinkled with natural justice and freedom of thought, speech and action. Then defines some laws some edicts that “Please you have what you need, earn what you want and respect what others have”. Stay loyal to State stay humane towards other creatures and creations whether man-made or God made.

It frames the mechanism to implement these regulations and a system of complaints and remedy. If then anyone violates any law one becomes subject of sanction. And when the implementing authority, police itself don’t have basic necessities what type of law and order it will enforce?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space