Policing is dead in Bangalore. Do it yourself

Policing responsibilities are being passed on to the citizens in what may be seen as failure of the police in the background of a spate of robberies and crimes in the past few days.

The spate of crimes has already seen the law & order police trying to tighten up vigil by setting up barricades on roads to check vehicles and their occupants to keep a check on robberies.

But an interaction on Friday between the city’s top cops and citizens of Jayanagar, JP Nagar, Basavanagudi, Subramanyapura, Chamarajpet, Banashankari, Girinagar, KS Layout and adjoining areas in South Division police jurisdiction saw police commissioner, BG Jyothi Prakash Mirji, appealing to the residents to appoint watchmen and set up CCTVs to increase vigil on the streets – which is otherwise a policeman’s role.

And all this, through expenses borne by the residents who anyway pay taxes expecting those very policing services for their protection in return. “If people do this, and join hands with the police to decrease crime, then we can achieve it,” Mirji said.

“We are going to hold a meeting with NGOs, and residents’ welfare associations and the residents to implement these things. If they ready to do it then we can bring the crime rate down,” Mirji said.

But this appeal, which is part of an exercise to ensure healthier police-public relations to curtail crime, has not gone down well with the residents’ welfare associations.

“It is not going to work practically. We have experimented on this earlier. Residents pay for a month and from the next, they won’t,” said KV Bhaskar Murthy, president of Federation of Jayanagar Residents Association.

“One watchman is not enough, there should be at least two men on each side of the street, and each has to do 8-hour shifts. Then we need to appoint six watchmen.

Who will pay them salaries?And who would monitor the surveillance cameras?”Sumathi Rao, president, Malleswaram Swabhimana Initiative, said they were already charging ¤750 as lifetime fee for their members.

“How will we be able to buy surveillance cameras, or even pay salaries to the watchmen?” she said. “It is the job of the police to do night patrolling on the streets; they have to go gate to gate and sign the roster maintained by the watchmen of the residential blocks; which they don’t,” she said.

“It is not possible to bring down the crime rate by appointing watchmen, when some security guards themselves are known to be involving in crimes. It is the policeman’s duty to do night patrolling.

If they don’t have sufficient people, let them tell the state government to appoint more personnel,” BLG Rao, president, First block Organisation of Residents for Clean Environment, (Force), said.