Archiving crime

One must laud the CPLC for having accomplished the Herculean task of digitising Karachi’s crime records.

One must laud the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) for having accomplished the Herculean task of digitising Karachi’s crime records and building an archive of 766,398 First Information Reports (FIRs), something the police force itself has not been able to do. Computerised Criminal Record Management, as the database is called, has cases from as far back as January 1, 1987 and is now being updated on a daily basis. This will benefit intelligence agencies, Rangers, foreign missions and local and foreign companies by making background checks quicker, criminals easier to trace and crimes easier to identify — but the biggest beneficiary is the police itself. In fact, according to the CPLC chief, Ahmed Chinoy, the database showed that some constables currently working in the police force had been named as suspects in FIRs in the past. Potentially, this archive could be an important step towards cleaning up the police force and restoring the public’s faith in its functioning. At present, this database contains only cases in Sindh, but merits expansion to include cases from other provinces too. This is something that the CPLC should look into.

Since its establishment in 1990, the CPLC has gone from strength to strength, working closely with the police in resolving kidnapping and ransom cases. Its recent move to expand operations to Hyderabad so that it can work on ransom and kidnapping cases in interior Sindh has been a positive development. The CPLC also proved its value in the aftermath of bank heists when it was asked to verify the credentials of security guards, after a special police cell set up for the same purpose failed to do so. In one respect, though, the CPLC has failed: One of its key functions was to narrow down the credibility gap between the police and the public. This has not happened; trust in the police is at such a low ebb that people shy away from even reporting car thefts. A recent report stated that the FIRs of more than 50  per cent of vehicle thefts were never lodged at police stations. Bridging the trust deficit between the citizens and the police is what both the police force and the CPLC should now focus on.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 9^th, 2011.