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| Policing the police | | | Dr Raja Muzaffar Bhat | 4/10/2012 10:42:14 PM |
| The J&K government is planning to introduce a new police law for the state in the upcoming months. It brings no comfort that the administration has consulted with other states before drawing up the draft. Since early last year the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and active citizens in J&K has been urging government not to think of passing any new law on policing without first holding fulsome wide and deep consultations with the public at large and taking their suggestions into the law. Consultations must also include consultations with the constabulary who bear the whole weight of policing but have little say otherwise.
It is not enough - especially given the history and recent experiences of J & K - for high public servants to chat with each other behind closed doors before coming up with a new law on so important a matter as policing. The new laws enacted by other states cannot be said to be the finest by any measure. Nearly all of them have diluted or completely subverted the directives of the Supreme Court in the 2006 Prakash Singh case. The Prakash Singh case had required all states to follow six directives, which if taken together and honestly implemented, would have gone a long way to turning what is today an enforcement agency widely seen to be poised against the people into an essential public service. Instead, in the absence of wide consultations most states have used the opportunity to increase police powers and reduce accountability. This is not a healthy direction and does not auger well for already strained police-public relations in J and K. Kerala is the only state that put in place a process of wide public consultation before finalizing its new police act. While the Act may not be perfect it is an improvement on every other new law. At the same time the process of consultation has helped educate the public about the police they own and set the stage for people oriented intelligence led policing which has proved so useful in keeping the overall peace and fighting insurgencies and terrorism in so many jurisdictions across the world. Since early last year CHRI has held several meetings in the State to ask what kind of policing people would want in future. The meetings everywhere threw up two themes: the extreme unhappiness of the general public with the police and a longing to be consulted and involved in shaping the vision and contours of future police public relations.
Much of the problem of alienation and youth unrest in J and K can be attributed to unaccountable policing. Distrust hardens into resistance when the public sees nothing changes despite every kind of pressure. The solution will be contributed to significantly if the police are seen to be more lawful and more transparent.
Policing a free people cannot be based on mimicking the military. Policing must recall that it is meant to be a service for a free civilian population while the military is there to minimize and deal with external threat.
The aim of new policing must be to ensure that all people are provided an environment in which each can enjoy his or her fundamental rights to the fullest. Change must first of all have a vision. This must come from the people. Reform must see the police becomes a peer group within the population. It must be designed to service explicit localized realities.
It is only then that a legal frame work should be put in place. Not before. This frame cannot be created without being informed by the widest possible consultation with all segments. Wide ranging broad based and very public consultation of what any reformed police must look like is the surest way to heal still fresh wou nds of the past. And the only way of legitimizing the police.WHAT KIND OF POLICE WOULD YOU WANT IF YOU HAD TO DESIGN A POLICE FORCE FOR TODAY?
o must not to be above the law
o must be under a system that can credibly police the police
o must be much more accountable at multiple levels
o get punished for victimizing anyone
o must be autonomous with less interference from outsiders and the political executive
o must be representative of the local population, live amongst them, be people friendly and able to interact respectfully with people
o must recognizes that it serves the people and not a colonial master, be representative of a society made up of liberated people and are not subject
o must be able to provide people with a sense of security to all people
o must be trained to be disciplined, moral and ethical in behavior
o must always be fair to all and unbiased and act within the law as its upholder and not only as an enforcer
o advancement must be on merit for serving the public and not on having connections
o must never be given rewards for 'kills'
o training must not be militaristic but include knowledge of peoples rights and have elements of psychology, law and procedure as well as the police law duties and consequences so that it creates a rounded personality. Police must have core training in human rights
o must be solution oriented and be able to respond rapidly to complaints, do quick honest investigation and help in resolving public concerns
o must contribute to the overall betterment of society
o must be unbiased and neutral.
o must not be criminal or consist of goondas
o must be recruited cleanly
o live locally in the areas where they come from and where they function
o must be a service for all and not only for the elite
o must be properly resourced with adequate training, people and infrastructure to do their job
o must be governed by a citizen's charter as much as a Police Act
o must have institutional arrangements whereby people and police interact regularly. |
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