LAHORE: Senior police officers have demanded that they be given administrative control of the Elite Force since they are unable to effectively punish errant personnel, The Express Tribune has learnt.
Police sources said that some district police officers (DPOs) and the Lahore SP Mobiles had conveyed to new Inspector General of Police Javed Iqbal that they should be given administrative control of the Elite Force under their disposal. The police are already in operational control of the force.
“Any system in which the person in command is different from the person in control is bound to fail,” said one senior police official.
The sources said that Elite Force personnel could flout orders from high ups since the worst the high-up could do is file a formal application with Elite Force headquarters against the.
They said that these applications were easily “lost” or delayed by a simple bribe to clerks.
The demands came after a recent episode where 10 Elite Force personnel sought to quit the security detail of Lahore High Court Chief Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry. After escorting the chief justice home on Tuesday, the 10 commandoes complained to Deputy Superintendent of Police Izaz Shah, who is in charge of security at the LHC, that they were not trained for point or static duty, which entailed standing in the same spot for a large part of the day. They said that they were trained for escort duty only and their Standard Operating Procedures were being violated.
DSP Shah transferred them, but an inquiry was ordered into why the men had gone to the DSP in charge of LHC security rather than their direct head in the Elite Force. The inquiry, led by DSP (Mobiles) Haji Abbas, has been completed but no action has so far been taken. The inquiry report remains at the Mobiles police office because the Elite Force has ordered a separate inquiry under a Colonel Ikram, deputy director commandant of the Elite School. That inquiry has not been finished.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 24th, 2011.
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