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Towards community policing

BHUBANESWAR: A dedicated cell for senior citizens in every police station, the provision that had been lying unimplemented, will soon be made operational in the twin city of Bhubaneswar-Cuttack."A direction has been sent to each police station. One police constable will keep record of senior citizens including their telephone numbers and addresses. He would try to visit them once in a while to inquire about their well-being," Commissioner of Police Bijay Sharma said.He was speaking at police-public interface jointly organised by Nayapalli Community Care Association and commissionerate that started preparing grounds for community policing here on Sunday. The purpose was to obtain feedback on expectations of the public from the police. The Commissioner of Police said when the commissionerate was set up in January people had a feeling that police had been given enormous power to impose fines and take people into custody at anytime and anywhere."The public perception is not correct. We want to act as a public delivery system. People should not come to police stations except for some verifications relating to passport or employment," he said.Later, Mr. Sharma said feedback to be collected from such meetings with citizens’ associations would be well documented and a copy of the proceedings would be sent to each police station for necessary action."The measures taken by police will be automatically reviewed in the next interface meetings."Speaking at the meeting retired Director-General of Police B. B. Mishra said with low strength police could not solve all the problems but it should create confidence and dispel fear among citizens by showing good behaviour.

The first interface of this kind witnessed loads of suggestions from citizens while everybody was having some sort of grumble against police. "The community policing concept sounds good. But the commissionerate system should strive not to discontinue the process midway. Traffic problems and land grabbing nuisances should be addressed at the earliest possible time which could bring down botheration of the police by 40 per cent," Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, editor of Oriya daily Sambad and a resident of Nayapalli, said.

Among others, city Deputy Commissioner of Police Himanshu Lal, community association president Pranakrushna Mishra and secretary Sudhir Mohanty were present.

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