Street crime rampant

It is rare for street crime to make the headlines wherever it happens in Pakistan, but the robbery caught on camera in Lahore in recent days is the exception and provoked a response from Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif no less. The clip — that has gone viral — records a commonplace robbery at traffic lights. The robbers threatened the occupants of a car, fired a shot into the air, stole gold jewellery from a female passenger and escaped on a motorbike. Robberies such as this are a daily occurrence. A report authored by the Interior Ministry in November 2015 covering the previous five years showed that out of 120,000 reported cases of street crime nationally 93,000 originated in Punjab. It was acknowledged that many thousands of cases go unreported to the police.

The call by the CM to arrest the culprits rings hollow and he is probably aware of that. He has expressed his disappointment that despite investing large sums in the provision of modern equipment and training that there has been no reduction in the incidence of street crime in Lahore. Similar initiatives in other provinces have produced equally negative results.

The police have offered cash rewards in some cases hoping that the citizenry will turn in the robbers — a faint hope indeed. Incentives are no replacement for good policing, and the much-trumpeted Lahore Dolphin Force on their expensive motorcycles seems to have little impact beyond the visual and cosmetic. Street crime is unchecked across the country in cities and towns large and small. Thousands of phones are snatched, ordinary people assaulted and injured and in some cases killed in the commission of these crimes, and the catching of the robbers and their subsequent prosecution rare indeed. Crime such as this has become normative, acceptable even, and the futility of reporting it to the police glaringly obvious. The robbery in Lahore has garnered unusual attention; whether it changes anything is very much an open question. Punjab has invested sizeable amounts to upgrade its police and the Chief Minister wants the force to be seen as the best in the country. Even this low benchmark may now be debatable given the recent spate of street crimes.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 24^th, 2016.

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