COMMUNITY POLICING: A DISTANT DREAM

(Published in The Statesman dated 26 April, 2001 )
Community policing has emerged as a buzzword in police lexicon. Is there any substance to it or is it merely a fancy policing philosophy debated in elitist fora and practised in tokenism? With the concept of community living having undergone a transformation in modern times where is the ‘community’ to which ‘community policing’ can be applied? Experiments have nevertheless been going on, though it is not easy to assess their success as community policing means differently to different people. The ambiguity in its definition has tended to confuse any exercise in police-public cooperation or police providing community-oriented services for community policing. There is a broad consensus that greater citizen control over the delivery and management of policing services within the community is the essence of community policing. Ideally the area to be so policed should be compact, with a homogenous and not too mobile a population. It is another name for neighbourhood policing wherein there is visible and accessible police presence. The policeman either lives within the community or is available on a shift basis. It is meant to supplement, and not supplant, traditional policing. It is proactive in character and can be a useful tool of preventive policing; detective policing involves investigation, requiring professional expertise. Police has to reach out to the public, in all humility and sincerity, in the spirit of “help us to help you” in keeping the neighbourhoods free from crime and civic strife. People’s trust has to be won and their involvement secured by giving them a say in the policing of the locality. Now, that is easier said than done. No police agency has been found willing to give any degree of control over the delivery and management of policing services to the people. Lip service notwithstanding, in the tussle between state-oriented policing and community policing the former stifles the latter. Growing social disharmony has kept public order under strain. Crimes have been getting violent and the locals do not want to be seen hobnobbing with the police for fear of reprisal. Resources, human and technological, have to be pooled to provide latest tools for scientific aids to investigation and surveillance, and that kind of synergy means centralised command and control. All this seriously limits public participation in police functioning. No police force really relishes members of the public telling them how they should go about their business, whether in setting goals and priorities or deciding on strategy and tactics. Public-police cooperation is therefore not able to go beyond consultation and closer interaction with the residents.
The nearest we came to community policing in modern times was when Robert Peel introduced the “beat constable” in Great Britain; the London Bobby remained synonymous with community policing for over a century. With passage of time there has been erosion of public trust in police even in that country and the beat constable is no more the friend, philosopher and guide that he used to be. Developed countries such as USA, Canada, Australia, Sweden and Denmark have been experimenting with community policing as neighbourhood crime prevention programmes, in different garbs. In the United States the Community Policing Consortium, administered and funded by the US Department of Justice, is a partnership of five of the leading police organisations firmly committed to the advancement of this police philosophy. Canada has extended community policing to the aborigines under the RCMP First Nations Community Service. A Community Tripartite Agreement between the aboriginal community, the Provincial Government and the Federal Government outlines the specific details of the community policing service. The Communities are involved from the start in the design, implementation and ongoing delivery of their police services. This makes it possible to maintain sensitivity and compatibility with that community’s culture and beliefs and gives the necessary flexibility to accommodate local variations in policing needs. India can draw appropriate lessons from this Canadian model in so far as the policing of our tribal communities are concerned. But it is the Koban system, indigenous to the Japanese police, which has achieved a worldwide reputation and has been copied by Singapore, Philippines and Malaysia. It has stood the test of time and has been accepted by the people of the land. The system operates through ‘police boxes’ and ‘residential police boxes’ at approximately 15000 locations all over Japan. Police boxes are deployed in urban areas and residential police boxes are located chiefly in such rural communities as agricultural, forestry and fishery towns and villages. These ‘boxes’ are the neighbourhood police and the most familiar police contact for the members of the community. These officers are always visible on the street and offer assistance in various personal and community matters. The informal house calls they make help in developing an understanding with their charge. The Koban newsletters, issued by these boxes, play an important part in promoting a friendly contact between the police and the community. The other salient features of the Koban system are the Koban (Chuzaisho) Liaison Councils. Approx 11000 in number, these are made up of local residents from various walks of life. The opinions expressed and the suggestions made in the council meetings help the police in setting priorities and planning their calendar. The third leg of the Koban tripod are about 475,000 households designated as Crime Prevention Liaison Stations, to serve as the basis of civil crime prevention activities in the community.
What has been the Indian experience? India was practicing community policing when the western world was still passing through the Dark Age. The ancient indigenous police system was based on the principle of local responsibility for local crimes. Village was responsible for its own policing and was a self-contained unit of criminal administration. Village autonomy was finely balanced with village responsibility. The system survived despite political and cultural changes under the Muslims, but the degree of its effectiveness varied according to circumstances. The system of policing introduced by the British, institutionalised by the Police Act of 1861, sounded the death knell of decentralized policing based on community acceptance. Though the police manuals paid lip service to taking the residents into confidence and treating them with courtesy, the police soon lost credibility with the public. The conduct of the police was far from people-oriented and its actions exposed it for what it was, an instrument to protect and promote British imperial interests. The system of having town outposts under urban police stations was an attempt at providing a neighbourhood police but the spirit of community policing was missing. The institution of rural police--nomenclature differed from province to province-- was maintained more as the eyes and ears of the government than as friends of the people. Independence was expected to change things but alas! the police-public divide only widened. Neither the laws changed nor the colonial mindset. Even the much-touted National Police Commission shied away from making any concrete suggestions on the subject of community policing other than pointing out the need for securing people’s involvement and cooperation. Efforts made have been half-hearted, uncoordinated and sporadic. In Bihar, as early as the fifties of the last century, the district superintendents of police used to undertake cross-country marches in course of which lot of bonhomie was shown when passing through or camping in a village. The experiments of “Friends of Police” in Tamilnadu, “Mohalla committees” in Maharastra, “Suraksha Samiti” in Orissa, Crime Prevention Committees” in Kerala, “Nagarik Suraksha Samitis” in Delhi and “Raksha Samitis” in Madhya Pradesh failed to make an impact and take root. Indore Police has been doing some community-oriented service work to woo the public but that can hardly be called community policing. Initiatives taken by individual officers to launch community service programmes die with their transfer. Police does realize the value of public support. We are all familiar with police taking the initiative in convening peace committees and appointing special police officers during a communal disturbance or organising Muhalla night watches when there is an outbreak of crime. The arrangement ends as soon as the crisis blows over. That is fire fighting and not fire prevention.
It is not very difficult to see why experiments based on American and Japanese models do not succeed under Indian conditions. The reasons lie in the archaic Police Act, our colonial mindset, prevailing socio-political environment, to mention only the more obvious hindrances. Political parties have been unanimous in their apathy to the recommendations of the National Police Commission. Our political masters are not prepared to let go of their control on police and so any degree of decentralization, which is at the core of community policing, remains a far cry. Nor is the departmental hierarchy willing to vest the degree of autonomy that the police officer on the beat will need. Community policing is also too expensive a proposition for a large and poor country like India to afford. We shall need a ten times bigger police force to try out any thing like a Koban police box. Against the current 1:1000 we will have to jump to a 1:100 police-public ratio, which appears impossible. Viewed as corrupt, highhanded and incompetent, police image has taken such a beating that no Indian household wants a policeman near its doorstep and this crisis of confidence is only deepening by the day. Community policing has been found to fare better among close-knit, homogenous groups. The Indian society is not only pluralistic but also suffers from a high degree of social dissonance on grounds of caste, creed, language, exploding population and crushing poverty. In such a daunting scenario ad hoc, piecemeal measures are doomed to failure. Public opinion should be brought to bear on the Parliament to replace the obsolete Police Act by a suitable enactment to make the police people-oriented and incorporate elements of community policing in the Act itself. A beginning could be made with integrating community policing with the Panchaiti Raj movement but clearly the masters have mental reservations. In the meantime let the police do some soul searching and do what it can -- recast its recruitment, training and appraisal norms – to make itself acceptable to the people. It must also change its character from a “force” to a “service". Till then community policing for us will have to remain a distant dream, a desirable goal, something like our Directive Principles.

(Dr. Sudhir Kumar Jha)
“ NIRVANA ”,
Buddha colony,
Patna 800 001
E-mail sudhirjhapatna@gmail.com

(The author is a former Director General of Police, Bihar.)