City police to establish new helpline
The city police has decided to establish a non-emergency complaint management helpline to register complaints against non-registration of FIRs, faulty investigations, illegal detentions, arrests, registration of false FIR, slackness of duty and demand of illegal gratification.
Declaring the in place complaints management systems archaic, SSP Administration Usman Bajwa announced that a new helpline would be established at the CCPO office to record complaints.
Interestingly, IGP Police Complaint Centre 8787 is already in place designated with the same function. Punjab Police had invested much in it and the IGP office would centrally monitor it, making it mandatory for a DSP rank officer to respond to the complaints made at the cell.
Successive IGPs have been bragging about the helpline’s ‘improved performance’.
A few weeks back, CCPO Umer Shoib Sheikh had proposed court-martial of police officials stating the current complaints management and internal accountability mechanism against police had miserably failed.
Bajwa while proposing his model of non-emergency helpline stated that the control room will be set up at CCPO office.
However, the new helpline was a non-emergency helpline. It will be specified for public complaints against police corruption, high handedness and faulty investigations.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 27th, 2020.Muhammad Shahzad