Punjab Police introduce new picketing policy

Dolphin Squad, PRU officials not allowed to establish pickets

LAHORE:

With a new provincial chief in the office, Punjab Police has introduced a new policy on setting up pickets.

Newly incumbent IGP Rao Sardar Ali Khan has asked SP Dolphin Squad to make sure that Dolphin Squad and the Police Response Unit act as the first responders. They are not allowed to establish police pickets.

Both the forces were set up as specialised patrolling units with a prime focus to improve police 15 emergency call response. However, with time they had started indulging in sidekicks including setting up pickets at 'flashpoints'.

As per some reports, despite injecting billions of rupees into the Punjab Safe City Authority and Dolphin Squad, Police 15 response has nosedived.

The realisation at optimum decision and policy making was made after the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government looked into those responsible for the delay in the Minar-e-Pakistan mob harassment case.

Rao Sardar Ali Khan was the chair of the inquiry committee established to fix responsibility for the incident.

Following the committee recommendations, no senior Lahore police officers were transferred but with Chief Minister Usman Buzdar's instructions, Law Minister Basharat Raja had been assigned the duty to take measures to improve Police 15 response.

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The instructions by Rao Sardar need to be studied in that context.

Khan on Monday, while chairing a video link conference of senior police officers, issued orders that an officer below the rank of sub-inspector shall not be appointed on police picket while the Circle Officer concerned shall meet the requirements of the police check posts and brief the staff. Police Order (2002) also specified a police post to be held under the presence of an ASI or SI.

The Dolphin Squad officials were the rank of constable or head constable.

Within the last few years, the picketing policy has been changed multiple times denoting various approaches of policing amid police command. As the police command changed the policy was transformed.

In October 2019, the then IGP Arif Nawaz had issued orders to remove all the intradistrict police posts. He had instructed that police posts should be established on entry and exit points of the districts only.

The then DIG Operations Lahore Ashfaq Ahmad Khan had moved that the pickets if necessary should only be set up in horizontal or parallel to the road as the vertical practice, a common one, was detrimental to public mobility as well caused nuisance.

Martyred DIG Mobeen Ahmad while serving as DIG Traffic Lahore had written to the then DIG Operations Lahore Haider Ashraf complaining that police pickets were one of the main reasons for traffic mess hence should be removed from the provincial metropolis.

However, after Nawaz as IGP, the policy was gradually revised.

A few police officers, a dominant perspective for being a traditional one, believed that police pickets helped fight crime. These developed a sense of deterrence and protection among citizens as well criminals hence were mandatory for crime-fighting strategy.

The other believed it was a tool of police exercising its nuisance value and a channel for corruption at the police station level.

There was another perspective former IGP Mushtaq Sukhera held. He was of the view that there should be police pickets but these should not be static but mobile and heavily guarded.

The meeting chaired by Rao Sardar was joined by Additional IG Operations Sahibzada Shehzad Sultan, DIG IT Waqas Nazir, RPO Sheikhupura Dr Inam Waheed, AIG Operations Zeeshan Raza while CPO Rawalpindi Ahsan Younis and DPO Mianwali Captain (retd) Mustansir Feroze participated via video link.

Apart from improvised picketing and patrolling plan, he directed DIG IT has to prepare and submit a feasibility report on the establishment of Police Service Centres after every 50 kilometres across the province and instructed CPOs, DPOs to send special awareness teams to educational institutions to prevent incidents of child abuse in the meeting.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 14^th, 2021.