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Borwankar had been a Humphrey Fellow at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs from 2001 to 2002 and had closely interacted with the Minneapolis and St Paul police for 10 months, with the Interpol for a month and with the Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Atlanta police briefly to study their community policing methods.
“Edward Schuh, my professor at the university had asked for my professional record and then nominated my name for the award. A couple of days back, I received a formal letter from the university confirming that I had received the award and am currently seeking permission from the government to attend the award ceremony to be held on September 16,” said Borwankar adding that the tickets will be sponsored by the university.
The university's website which has featured Borwankar's profile as one of the recipients of the award states that 'The committee cited her implementation of community policing in the Indian Police Service, an innovation she learned from the university. She is a role model for young women. She has pioneered and played a leadership role in adopting strategies to control organised crimes and her long-standing concern with larger social issues such as the rights of marginalised groups.
Borwankar who has submitted her doctorate thesis on community policing to the Pune University last month said that her tenure at Humphrey Institute helped her compare community policing mechanisms in the West with those that exist here.
“Community policing in the West is systematic and carefully documented. They even get an external audit done on their functioning which lends an objectivity. Here, though we have several community policing measures, they work in fits and spurts, are hardly documented or even evaluated,” she said. Borwankar’s thesis titled ‘Exploratory study on community policing in selected cities of Maharashtra’ entailed samples of 350 Pune-based students pursuing their post-graduate degrees, 250 supervisory police officers across Maharashtra and 650 field level police officers sub-inspector and inspector ranks. “The two interesting results from my study show an encouraging trend in community policing. While 99 per cent of the students said that they are willing to interact with police but are impinged by fear, a majority of the policemen supported the concept of community policing,” Borwankar added.
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