When the police cannot be trusted, people are reluctant to report crimes, leading to a vicious cycle where criminals and murderers can operate with impunity. DESIGN: SAMRA AAMIR
A recent incident at Civil Hospital Karachi, where two armed men helped a convicted murderer escape from police custody, highlights for the umpteenth time the incompetence of the police. According to news reports, the four policemen on the scene were caught off guard and could do nothing to prevent the escape. They apparently also took the convict outside the hospital and were virtual sitting ducks as the accomplices started firing on them. For allowing this to happen, the policemen should be suspended immediately and an investigation started to determine how the incident took place.
If this incident was an outlier which wasn’t indicative of the police’s general performance, it wouldn’t be quite so worrying. But it has simply become routine for murderers to escape police custody in suspicious circumstances. Gangster Rehman Dakait was able to do so multiple times before he was finally killed in a police shoot-out and it was obvious he used his power and connections to do so. In 2007, terrorist Rashid Rauf was able to escape from police custody in Islamabad despite the fact that his notoriety as a plotter to blow up transatlantic planes should have guaranteed that he be kept secure. More recently, we saw in Lahore how the police were unable to stop an enraged mob form burning down houses of Christians.
Many have noted that police personnel simply have no incentive to risk their lives, given how low their pay is. While it is true that we should be paying our policemen more, it is essential that all police personnel who are derelict in their duty be disciplined for their infractions. This needs to start all the way from the bottom, including cops who stop cars simply to earn bribes and move to the top, where police chiefs need to be held accountable for the performance of their departments. When the police cannot be trusted, people are reluctant to report crimes, leading to a vicious cycle where criminals and murderers can operate with impunity.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 14th, 2013.
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There is a fundamental flaw in the implementation of Police organization in Karachi. Nowhere in the world in a major city such as Karachi, Police is "imported" from other cities, provinces and rural areas. Police command should be under the city government or under the mayor of the city. Policemen come to Karachi from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, rural Punjab and Sindh and most of them treat the city as Dubai. i.e., come here for a few years, make as much money as possible and then leave. A lot of SHO's pay a hefty sum to the Police higher-ups to get stationed in certain areas of Karachi because of the high potential of making enormous amounts of money. The loyalty of the Police is not with the city dwellers, no matter what ethnicity they are. Most of them don't have their friends, relatives and family members in the city and have no intrinsic interest in serving the localities. To draw a parallel, a New York city cop will not last an hour in rural Texas and vice versa. You need someone with local ties, who grew up in the city to be in Police. Once this fundamental flaw is addressed, the rest of the things such as Police training and professionalism can be talked about. Until then you can forget about Police helping the citizens of Karachi. People are actually more scared of Police and going to the station when they are seeking help or have been wronged.