The Police Station – Sanctuary or torture chamber?
Law enforcement being the primary responsibility of the police in any country, in turn the guardians of the law should be perceived as the saviours of the public. Then why is it that the police station is seen by both the intelligentsia and the masses as a torture chamber rather than as a place of sanctuary? Not only in Pakistan and many other less developed countries (LDCs) but also in many democratic and developed countries of the world the police carry such an aura of fear that common citizens find it virtually impossible to approach them for succour, in fairness this could well be unfounded in most cases, based on wrong perceptions. The debate whether to have a metropolitan police or not is more a matter of semantics than anything else, corruption and collaboration in crime are manifest in all the systems, it is only the honest intent of the leader/s that gives the process integrity. New York carried a terrible reputation as a city less than a decade ago, its police force had an ugly face, yet today the same New York Police Department (NYPD) is considered a model for others to adopt, the result of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s superb efforts to turn that unsavoury image around by bringing in meaningful reforms across the board, in particular “Humanising the Police Stations” as referred to in an article on March 15, 1997 by that title in THE NATION.
Pakistan has far more contrasting needs other than crime than those of other countries, ethnic, sectarian, cultural divide, etc being some of them. The Police Station (thana) carries no fear for the habitual offender, invariably he (or she) has worked out a comfortable cast-iron arrangement with the law enforcers that is seldom broken, in many cases criminal plans may even have emanated from these precincts. The irony is that it is the honest, God-fearing citizens who dread a trip to the police station. For women to go to the Police Station to even report a crime is akin to Doomsday, the mass perception being that both self-respect and honour may be at stake. This terrible state of affairs does not even begin to describe how these so-called sanctuaries have turned virtually into dens of evil, arousing emotions of both fear and hatred, the exact opposite of what the Police Station should evoke from the people in the vicinity.
The Punjab Government requested a pilot project in 1997 for a model police station in 1997, the Punjab Police reacted to the Presentation of PROJECT HIFAZAT (a plan for 10 such Police Stations) as if a basket of cobras had been hurled into their midst. Our “democratic” governments need the muscle of the police services to impose their brand of democracy on the people they “serve”, in such an environment that innovative plan never saw fruition and was still-born. Every new government engages in Police reforms by changing a few faces in the police hierarchy, the new rulers are led to believe that they have “turned around” the whole organisation. This process involves wholesale reshuffling of Station House Officers (SHOs), the police executives controlling the Thanas, the musical chairs involves putting favourites into lucrative places, ordering those out of favour to report to HQ. The nature of the SHO or the Police Station does not change and life goes on but with different faces and names. In the rural areas the situation is far worse as the local Zamindars exercise the power of life and death over the population in their areas. The plan proposed to the Punjab government was pragmatic and far-reaching for the country, moreover, it did not add a penny to the budget despite asking for a salary increase to meet minimum living costs. If the police at the lower end of the tier is not well paid or does not have facilities, mostly because their budget is skimmed off at various stages, corruption becomes a necessity for them.
PROJECT HIFAZAT proposed an “Operations Management Division” and a “Human Resources Division” in the Police Station. While the Operations Management Division (OMD) was structured to make the services available to the public more efficient, it was the addition of the Human Resources Division (HRD) and its components that was of immense importance to the concept of turning the reputation of a torture chamber to a place of sanctuary. HRD envisaged a (1) Judicial section (2) Citizen-Police Liaison Committee with four sub-sections, namely (a) Public Relations (b) Arbitration (c) Legal Aid and (d) Medical Aid. Magistrates in the Judicial section were to be available on the premises 24 hours to give legal cover to those in police custody. To be remanded police had to seek judicial order from the magistrate on duty. The powers of the police to hold a person in custody without judicial process was to be curtailed. The plan called for elected Local Councillors Court to act not only for arbitration but also as mediators in the cases referred to it by the magistrates or failing that, to bring the case to trial. There are many disputes which can be settled locally instead of escalating into possible crimes or the subject of long drawn out of court cases. Higher Courts need a break from being overloaded with trivial issues. A small medical room, duly manned by doctors 24 hours, will also function to provide much needed first aid or specialist referrals. A Female-cum-Juvenile Section was to handle these special categories. Today there is no mechanism to handle specialist problems, all are treated with the same broad brush, with hard bristles.
The Operational Management Division (OMD) must invariably be handled by someone with the rank of DSP; important police stations may even have Superintendents of Police (SPs). OMD can be organised into Sections of (1) Information (2) Criminal Investigation (3) Patrolling (4) Security (5) Crime Prevention and (6) Administration. The Computerised Information Section should be (1) linked to the National Data Organisation (NDO) either directly or indirectly and should have data about all citizens residing in the area, they would also record as well their complaints/grievances when made (2) maintain proper blown-up maps of every structure in the area (3) record of known criminals, their relatives, friends and contacts (4) forensic section with capability of finger-printing and making photos of the scene of crime (5) record of ethnic, religious and radical activists in the area and (6) maintaining of liaison with adjacent Police Stations.
When a citizen builds up the courage to go to the Police Station to record his (or her) grievance, the police officers on duty are not only reluctant to record the grievance but tend to treat the complainant as an accused. Their conduct being intimidating, it is almost impossible for women to take this risk! The law and the police rules necessitate logging of every information in the Station Diary (SD), which is today mostly, according to common prevalent practices in the hands of an unauthorised person, a constable. Before condemning the police for being corrupt, inefficient and negligent of their duty, we have to be fair and acknowledge that the Police Station as it is organised presently, does not have (1) a proper organisation and management (2) enough funds (3) proper information (4) proper mechanism for quick redress of grievances (5) citizen-police liaison to remove citizens’ distrust of the PS and its staff and (6) availability of dispensation of justice at the basic level.
Radical measures have to be taken at the grassroots level of social interaction to create trust in the minds of the citizens and thus take the first step in making the police effective at the grassroots level of the social structure. To make this experimental model successful, some Police Station in the urban area should be made models for adoption. Changes will have to be made in line with the experience gained as the experiment progresses. The police personnel should not be changed, they should be made to do their job. Effective monitoring can be provided “on the job” by the Human Resources Division. The idea is to convert the Police Station from a den of fear to an oasis of peace for the citizenry of the area. This can only be done by humanising the Police Station, turning it from a torture chamber to a place of genuine sanctuary.
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