Police: autonomy and accountability

No department can be asked to account for its action which does not have autonomy to perform those actions

The demand for police accountability has never been more vociferous. There has been clamor all around for police inefficiency, brutality and corruption. But the colonial heritage of the police is the favourite solution for all that is not well with police; the glory, discipline, order and the formations. It goes without saying that the empire was neither itself accountable to the people nor they made the police directly accountable to public. A robust and result-oriented accountability mechanism is must for performance as well as credibility in a democratic dispensation as ours.

The accountability is a much sought after goal, autonomy not so much. The checks and balances for a force known to be brutal make sense, more power and authority not so much. The accountability however is neither possible nor advisable without autonomy. The former is holding power to account and the latter is holding power to perform. No department or organisation can be asked to account for its action which does not have autonomy to perform those actions. The colonial system denied both. Police was just a tool in the hands of empire and was neither autonomous nor accountable to people. The arrangement suited the empire whose targets were transitory and obligation to public non-existent. The irony, however, is that the arrangement continued ever after the targets have become permanent and obligation to public, a necessity.

Police Order 2002 was a step in the in the direction of ensuring both autonomy and accountability, albeit incomplete and insufficient, but a significant step indeed. The law provided the head of police to be a secretary to the government as well as Public Safety Commissions and complaint authorities to monitor and evaluate the performance. The progress on both has been faltering; the autonomy eroded with the passage of time and the accountability never took root. The goal posts of performance have also been changing in the wake of new challenges and developments. All however has not been lost and the reforms in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa through the new holistic Police Act have been a guiding light for the other formations to follow. Though the success story of K-P police has not been enough to convince the province of Sindh- where the new proposed police law takes the police back just not few decades but few centuries. The force that will come into being as a result of this law will be devoid of even existing system of accountability.

Police accountability can be defined at two levels -- collective and individual. At the collective or agency level, it refers to control or administration over the police departments and how these are answerable to the people as a whole. In Pakistan, the provincial governments generally exercise direct control over the police department as far as assignments and budgets are concerned. The K-P Police Act devolves the fair amount of that to the Police department and the proposed Sindh Police takes away whatever remaining, a stark contrast indeed. Political control also does not extend to accountability within the organization and is restricted to populist interfering measures like suspensions and transfers. The external forums like complaint authorities provided in Police Order 2002 failed to take root owing to political as well as organizational resistance. Political resistance was due to absence of will to share control and organisation was weary of capture by the elements who themselves are subject of law enforcement.

If numbers are any guide, the police department is one of the most punishing departments in the country. Each year thousands of police personnel are awarded scores of punishments. The whole exercise of punishments has however proven ineffective in the long run despite their short term deterrent value. Firstly, the punishments are mostly arbitrary and arise out of whims, ego and performance stress.  Secondly, almost always the punishments orders are without legal ‘reason’ and due process. Thirdly, there does not seem to be any consensus on ‘prioritisation’ of severe misconducts.    That is why the departmental punishments invariably are either set aside at the appeal stage within the police hierarchy or later in administrative service tribunals. The whole process thus becomes self-defeating, and even hundreds of thousands penalties, hardly any ‘black sheep’ ever leaves the department except for death or retirement.

The solution lies in internal autonomy and external accountability. Mostly there is distrust for the members of the public deciding on Police actions but this is inevitable a well as necessary. The complaint authorities need to be revived with involvement of respectable members. That is necessary but not sufficient. Police ombudsman is another forum which can be effective and trustworthy. The ombudsman can work as both information providing forum under the Freedom of Information legislation as well as one-window for the complaints of misconduct against police officers. Already the concept of Ombudsman specific to departments has proven to be useful, as seen in case of Tax and banking. All these mechanisms are conditional on realisation on part of both police and policymakers that only an autonomous police department can be accountable, and only an accountable police can attain trust of the public they serve.