New unit, same cops

The Punjab government is hailing its establishment of a new Crime Control Department (CCD) as a major step toward ensuring public safety and reducing crime rates, but the specialised anti-organised crime initiative remains fraught with the same challenges and shortcomings that undermine policing in general.

First and foremost, the effectiveness of any law enforcement agency hinges on the training and competency of its personnel. Unfortunately, the CCD is little more than window dressing, as cops involved are recruited from the same pool that has helped earn the Punjab Police its less-than-sterling reputation. Meanwhile, the large recruitment that will be required to replace officials assigned to the CCD could actually lower standards even further in the 'regular' police force. A specialised CCD is also likely to be missing any element of trust with the community, since officials are unlikely to be serving in areas where they are 'local' or trusted on a personal level. We have seen the creation of new departments lead to unnecessary bureaucratic expansion that actually complicates the work they were supposed to do. Even with the CCD, there are legislative gaps which some experts fear could lead to inefficiency through jurisdictional overlap with local police stations, and even problems in court during trials.

But perhaps most importantly, there is the question of who actually wanted this new unit, because several reports have suggested that senior officials did not even know that it had been proposed until it had already been launched. Similarly, the Punjab IG recently noted that the provincial force has also requested setting up a cybercrimes division, even though we already have a federal-level force for exactly that, and despite its own flaws, the FIA's cybercrimes wing has done a reasonable job. Instead of all of this investment to create new redundancies, the government should focus on improving the quality of existing law enforcers.