Crime prevention week essential for police image

The advertisements are everywhere. Prominent, startling and provocative. The cocky young man, the scared woman and the by now familiar logo, ‘Mumbai Police Crime Prevention Week’. It’s a good move, and conducted for once in an atypically flamboyant fashion. The debates with prominent citizens, the publicity blitz, the words: ‘‘You are not alone in your fight, The Mumbai Police is with you.’’ All of it is long overdue. But will it work?

Mumbai’s police force has always prided itself on being compared to Scotland Yard. The fact that we live in one of the safest cities in the country also implies that it has got something right. And yet, it has problems. Serious problems.

Some years ago I volunteered to write a feature on what it was like to spend 24 hours at a police station. Everyone I knew was apprehensive when I mentioned it. The irony was obvious and would have been funny if it wasn’t sad. But the fact (that led to the idea of the feature coming up in the first place) was that a police station, the place that should logically have been the most secure in the city was considered by most people, the most unsafe. Why? Talk to someone who has had to visit a police station in connection with a burglary, an accident or a dispute, and chances are that he will be angry. Angry because he would have had to wait, to fight or use influence to get his complaint attended to and often the response that resulted was too little and too late.

The reaction is based on other factors as well. What is the picture of the cop in the eyes of the average Mumbaikar? He is the man who kicks street urchins and takes hafta from prostitutes. He is the man who pockets a bribe when you commit a traffic offence, he is the man who could demand a cut when he retrieves your stolen goods. And that is so far as daily interaction goes.

During the 1992-3 riots when people were being killed and houses burnt the police were shown to have played a partisan role. And anyone who has talked to gangsters in the underworld would have been told stories of police complicity. It is one thing for senior police officers to condemn the popular cinema for portraying policemen in a bad light, the fact is the picture put across mirrors public experience and suppressing it will not alter perceptions.

But what of the public? Can an institution like the police force be perceived in isolation? Doesn’t its situation reflect the general rot in society whether it is in attitudes to corruption or sectarianism? There is no denying that fact.

Society in general has been responsible in two ways. One is neglect. We do not care enough that police stations are dreary dingy places with inadequate facilities. Or that the police force is burdened with unimaginably hard duties and pressures. Nor do we spare much thought for the swords that hang over effective policemen wielded by vested interests and even by criminals.
Y C Pawar, one of the city’s most respected cops was hounded in ingenuous ways by the gangsters he acted against. Equally significant is the fact that people are willing to break the law and bribe their way out with money or influential contacts.

In the circumstances the current initiative is a remarkably progressive one. If the police and the public can be brought together it is likely to foster greater sympathy and understanding of the common problems that beset the two. It would also go some way in removing the stigma attached to the police and bring about a measure of trust. But any real gain can only come from substantive change. Without that negative perceptions of the police will continue to prevail leaving the public relations exercise with nothing but minor, temporary benefits.

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