Police service and public satisfaction

Photo: iqbal ahmed/drik news

According to media reports, Professor Mahbub Uddin Ahmed of Dhaka University and his team conducted a study on Dhaka Metropolitan Police in which they found that the majority of the respondents were satisfied with the service of police. This report has drawn sharp reaction from readers and some have gone to the extreme extent of branding the whole report as an example of corruption. The study has been termed as biased. Most readers tend to agree with the TIB's branding the Police Department as the top ranking corrupt organisation of the country.
Unfortunately, no reader or commentator has ventured to find out the objective conditions that are suspected to contribute towards such a dismal image of the principal law enforcement organ of a republic. Since the image of the police reflected by the mirror of public opinion conforms to what the police and the police culture are, both the police image and police culture are tarnished and appear to be tarnished also. Therefore, the tarnished image needs to be seen in both historical and contemporary context.
It is a commonly held experience that the public does not trust the police although they have to depend on them. Even if the public starts trusting the police, the law does not. This puts the police in a unique predicament. The mistrust between police and the public is a historical creation. Laws which govern the police were created to raise the trust of the people in British Empire so that the colonial occupation may continue forever.
When the police were organised, they were given a low status, a low salary, but more fetters so that they could not really serve the people but only the masters who were ruling the people. This background has to be understood clearly while studying the evolution of police in our country. There is a consensus that the police has been misused and abused, leading to the decline in the rule of law and thereby increasing distrust in police performance.
One would not be unrealistic to deem that trust begets responsibility and distrust begets irresponsibility. At present the rank of police constables has good number of graduates and the higher appointments are made on the basis of competition and tests. There is, therefore, no reason, to presume that, on becoming police officers, all will become corrupt and unscrupulous. In fact, greater statutory trust, effective departmental supervision and independent judicial control will help in the removal of undesirable practices that still persist and in improving the quality of service.
The politician knows that the police could be trusted; otherwise he will not be moving around with gunmen, guards and security cover. The public know that the police have to be relied upon; otherwise the police stations would have closed down long ago. Conscientious policemen believe that they could be trusted from the way they sacrifice their lives in public interest. Then who is not trusting police? It is the law of country made by the British 155 years ago: the courts hand down the verdict after interpreting this law. What is the remedy then to increase the trust under the law? The answer is to restructure the law which will, hopefully, raise the standards of police professionalism and give them an opportunity to improve their performance.
The laws of crime, evidence and procedure dating back to mid-nineteenth century and designed to serve the colonial interests of an imperial power still govern the day-to-day functioning of our police force. The question is: can a colonialist police meet the needs of a free society in a flux? It would not be an exaggeration to say that most efforts at reform have met with increasing resistance from the entrenched privileged classes in politics and the so-called civil service. Our society looks at and treats a policeman with revulsion and contempt little realising that there is no such thing as 'scientific investigation' and 'clean interrogation' under a legal system where the guardians of law are not even recognised as such.
The Criminal Procedure Code and the Evidence Act look upon police officers with distrust, which lowers their morale, reduces their efficiency and affects their character. The considered view is that the public cannot be expected to trust the police when the law of the land does not do so. This distrust of the police is not only widely known but also manifests itself every day in courts throughout the country. It is thus not unusual to see police officers resorting to padding of evidence and other dubious methods partly because what they do and what they say are invariably looked upon with suspicions. The question is how can the police function if they are not trusted?
In our country, the law maintains that statement of witness recorded by the police need not be signed by them. Confessions made before a police officer are not admissible in evidence. Even when the fact to recovery of a crime weapon becomes admissible, any self-incriminating statement of the accused will render it suspect before the court and a conviction can be sustained only on independent evidence of witnesses. For example, if the police officer is the only witness in a crime like murder, rape or robbery, a conviction cannot be sustained merely on his evidence.
Is it an anomaly, therefore, that the police wear uniforms, parade themselves as the representatives of the state and symbol of law and use their powers to maintain order in society? They are also trusted to safeguard the lives of VVIPs. Citizens go to police stations to lodge complaints on the trust that the police will protect them. In 'police week' every year a long list of police martyrs who have laid down their lives for the safety and the security of the people is read out. Homage is paid to the departed heroes. Despite all these the law says that the police cannot be trusted.
The increasing violence, the changing patterns of crime, more sophistication of weapons used in crime and the general atmosphere of insecurity demand a review of the provisions of law to empower the police for effectively dealing with lawless activities. We have to (a) free the police from the clutches of extraneous forces (b) make the police accountable to people and law (c) improve police credibility by reposing more trust in his depositions at least at the Assistant Superintendent level (d) raise his status to make him trustworthy in the eyes of the citizen (e) regulate police behaviour through internal controls and external supervision through an independent agency.
The above steps may appear unusual to transform an organisation abruptly from branded unreliable to virtuous people of some description. But there is no alternative left to us. The way character, ethics and morals are lowered; the manner in which educated people flout the law; the helpless way in which the state is witnessing the ordeal of the citizens … all these compel us to do something drastic. When trust is reposed in police, there will be proper response also to honour the trust. There should be no premonition that the situation will not improve. It will once police reforms are started.

The writer is a columnist of The Daily Star.