Community policing holds the key in answering the emerging trend of cyber crimes that transcend geographical boundaries. This is the confidence representatives of community policing initiatives across different countries have.
These practitioners and academicians handling the theme have come together in the city for the Global Community Policing Conclave, organised by the Kerala Police in association with the International Police Executive Symposium (IPES).
Community policing could be a platform to understand that “the community can police itself. Crime will always be there, it is just the question of stabilisation and minimisation”, said Jecin Steyn of the Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa.
Many forces are trying to balance the process of reaching out to home communities and addressing the rising global threat. “The critical issue in the U.S. is balancing community policing and interacting with communities with our new crime control strategies. The challenges of the time are not just the typical crime that police are used to respond to, like robberies and shooting, but also cyber crime,” said Michael M. Berlin of Coppin State University, U.S.
With the launch of the community policing initiative, police departments have started recognising issues that have been pushed back in priorities and addressing them. “Efforts are being made to address the issues of aborigines, who continue to be disproportionately represented in social justice,” said Duncan Chappell, Professor with the Institute of Criminology, University of Sydney.
This attempt becomes more relevant in multi-racial societies, be it Australia, the U.S. or South Africa, even in societies where immigrant communities are merged well. “The Dutch society is facing issues with Moroccan juveniles, who belong to immigrant families from former colonies like Surinam. Community officers are now trying to mobilise Moroccan people to solve their problems,” said Arie Van Sluis, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Each nation is trying to address the issue in its own way. “The police department was separated from the military, till then it was a paramilitary force, only in 2004. Since then efforts have been on to deal with community issues. Recently, crime prevention committees have been formed to serve as an interactive platform for various sections of society and police,” said Izmia Zahin, sub-inspector, Maldives Police Service.
For a country like Afghanistan, which is regrouping after major social upheavals, the community policing initiative has helped to organise society. “This has helped in bringing the public close to police, which also means getting intelligence about anti-national activities,” said Brigadier General Dastyar Khalilullah, Deputy Police Chief of Afghan Police.
The experience of the police in Nigeria endorses this view. “The confidence in the public has increased since the community policing initiative was launched some five years ago,” said Abdul Rahman Dambazau, former lieutenant general of the Nigerian Military Police and a criminologist.
B. Sandhya, Inspector-General of Police, Ernakulam Range, interacted with the delegates. P. Chidambaram, Union Minister for Home, will inaugurate the two-day conclave on Wednesday.
