COMMUNITY LIAISON GROUP (CLG)

  To improve better police-public relations, it is felt necessary to involve the concept of ‘Community Policing’ for prevention and detection of the crime in the area. The BPR&D is also encouraging to involve the ‘Community Policing’ in maintaining law & order.  In addition to the existing system of ‘Community Policing’, the following additional steps are also required to be taken by all concerned.  

1. In all the Police Stations, Community Liaison Groups have been formed represented by non political local respectable from the Society.   

2. Periodical meetings are held by SHO / CI / SP at different levels. The CLG meeting will play a vital role at the time of caste /group clashes. 

3. They act as ‘Permanent Peace Committee’ during caste clashes in outskirts of the Union Territory .

        At present, the CLG scheme is already activated at PS / OP level. SHO / CI / SP are taking regular meetings with the CLG members involving them for better policing.  However, it has been decided that at District level, the CLG should be constituted under the chairmanship of Senior Superintendent Police {SSP (L&O / Kkl)}.  All SHOs will send some names of the respectable persons from their area, which includes bureaucrats, politicians, social workers, NGOs, advocates, doctors, academicians, etc., to the concerned SPs. Committee will be constituted and regular meetings will be held with the members of the District-level Community Liaison Group. A new CLG called as SFP (Special friend of Police) also be introduced to seek cop-operation of the public.

           Community Policing Resource Centre (CPRC): It is proposed to start ‘Community Policing Resource Centre’ at the Police Headquarters under the chairmanship of the Inspector General of Police.  The CPRC Scheme will emphasis greater participation of the public in day-to-day affairs and will provide useful suggestions for improving Police functioning.   The concerned SP will send the names of the respectable people. Accordingly, a Committee will be constituted and regular meetings will be held at DGP Conference Hall by the DGP.  The CPRC will act as a Resource Centre for the Police Department. 

Preview on Community Policing

CLG'S SCHEME

             Community policing in Assam was started on 3/7/1996 when a meeting of the citizens under Panbazar Police station in Guwahati was convened by the S.P. City Shri Kuladhar Saikia, to discuss the concept and launching of "neighbourhood watch scheme" to promote policing through community participation. A series of such meetings was organized at hte initiative of different Police Stations in the City in the wake of sudden sprut of criminal activities by notorious criminals. This was the first organized efforts to pave the way for community participation in policing amongst the City dwellers in the residential colonies and areas where Neighbourhood Watch Groups were formed to counter the menace or criminals by the joint effort of the local Police and the citizens. A major thrust for it was made when the BPR&D and the UNDP started a project on "Improvement of organisation and Managment of law Enforcement Agencies in India" , which aimed at changing the attitude of the average police man at the P.S.'s towards the public, to make them people friendly and to improve their living and working conditions. The project was implemented as a trial in three States Assam, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, in selected Districts and selected P.S.'s in those districts. In Assam , it was tried in Guwahati and Jorhat district at the Pan Bazar and All Women P.S.'s at Guwahati and Jorhat and Titabor P.S.in Jorhat district. One officer in each rank from constable to Inspector was chosen as a "Change Agent" and trained specially for attitudinal charges by the BPR&D. These "Change Agents" were taken abroad to UK and Singapore to expose them to thier style of poicing and behavoir with the public, after which they are being used as Trainers to train other police Officers to bring about an attitudinal change in them towards the public. The results of this project have been very encouraging and hence, we have spread this project to all the districts in Assam . Surprisingly, there was no resistance to this project from the rest of the force, except that after sometime, some of the " Change Agents" were told that they lost their "macho" image of a policeman.In fact, the project has aroused a lot of curiosity among the Force with the majority of them trying to know more about it.

Along with the change in attitude, an attempt was made to make the PS's more appealing to the public by taking the following steps :

          1. The whole P. S. was cleaned thoroughly and painted properly to make it aesthetically appealing. Malkhana items strewn in front of the P.S. and all over were removed from the front side to proper storage elsewhere. All lights were chnaged to make the PS look bright at night instead of a dull and gloomy appearance, which scares away people. Similarly, all toilets and lock-up's were repaired and kept absolutely hygienic, in keeping with NHRC's recommendations. The entire PS was also done up to provide decent sitting and working conditions for the PS staff to work and write the CD's. The most important change was the creation of a receptionist and attended to properly. These changes have provided th PS's with atmosphere altogether, in keeping with the policy of attitudinal change towards the public. We have issued orders to the PS's that a complainant should not be sent back from the PS on jurisdictional grounds and the concerned PS should be rung in his presence and told about the complaint and then the complainant directed accordingly. On the ground, the PS staff were told to behave properly with the people while patrolling on the beat and even to make house calls, to introduce themselves as their friendly police-man, but the heavy duties on us due to the prevailing insurgency situation in Assam prevented us from doing these house calls. However, the response time of the police hasbeen cut down considerably by sending PR vans, on reciept of information. Simultaneously, the visibility of the police on the roads has also been increased, specially at night, to bring confidence ot the people.

            2, One big step taken for the community policing was the information of Nagrik-Samitees in urban areas, on the pattern of Village Defence Parties. These Samitees consist of volunteers from the public who carry out patrolling duties in the city along with the local police. We have formed one such Samitee in each ward in Guwahati city and they are doing excellent work regarding patrolling, eviction of encroachers from pavements, removal of derelict parking of vehicles, house to house surveys of tenants in their area and in detection of crime. Several criminals have been caught red handed by these Samitees and the detection of crime has gone up tremendously due to clues provided by them. Thus we have been able to rescue kidnapped children in two days and arrest criminals involved in crime against property in a weeks time with recovery of stolen property. On festival days, these volunteers came out in large numbers to help arrangements for bandobast duties. Some unemployed youth are also utilized for traffic control duties. These Samittees have brought the police closer to the peope and have been the single largest factor in removing suspicion and making the police people friendly. We have moved the government now to ammend the V.D.O act to give legal powers to these Samitees in urban areas. This has boosted the police's image to the extent that reports about Police brutality have disappeared from the front pages of almost all Guwahati newspapers for the last three years or so.

CLG's (Community Liason Group)

           Along with the Nagrik Samittees, we have formed Community Liason Group (CLG's) at the state, district and PS level where eminent and non-political persons from the society are called to attend a meeting with police to voice their complaints and to give their suggestions for providing better policing to the society. These meeting are attended by eminent persons like newspaper editors, retired high court judges, literatures, educationists, social servents and women organisations and many useful suggestions have come from them to improve the service that the police can provide to them and when people are taken into confidence, they come out to help the police. Thus, in one such CLG meeting at the state Police headquarters, the members asked us about a news item in a local newspaper which was not favourable to the police. When we told them that the news item was false and gave them the actual facts, the members were furious on the newspapers and formed a committee amoungst themselves to go and meet all the newspaper editors and request them to publish the correct news as the public has right to know the truth !

Social Fall out:

            It has been the experience worldwide that whenever people are empowered like this to police themselves, they start discussing other social evils that bedevil their society, sooner or later. This has been our experience also in Assam and the CLG's and the Nagrik Samittees have taken upon themselves the burden to rid the society of various social evils that face us today. Thus, in Guwahati, the Nagrik Samittees have started pressurizing the civic authorities to clean the garbage, eviction of encroachers the pavements and even sorting out petty land disputes at the local level instead of going to the court. This, in a way, amounts to bringing the administration close to the people and helps reduce strain on the governmental machinery. This is something that is very desirable today.

Mobilizing people against insurgency:

             One of the best fallouts of this community policing has been the mobilization of the people against the prevailing insurgency in Assam . Thus, in the rural areas, the people are actually guarding vital installations, bridge and railway tracks to prevent sabotage by extremists. Also, meetings like the CLG, Nagrik Samittees help to wean away people from the extremists to the govt. and, to that extent, reduce the base on which the extremists thrive. In fact, in Guwahati, people have taken active steps to thwart extremist designs for carrying out large scale sabotage by guarding vital installations physically. In one such instance, about 300 volunteers formed a physical ring round the Guwahati refinery for 15 days to prevent it from being blown up by the ULFA during the Independence-day in August 2000. Similarly other groups of people are guarding railway bridges and tracks to make rail travel safe. During elections, villagers volunteer their services to see that road communications are not disrupted by extremists so that election parties can go to the remotes areas and conduct elections and come back safely. This has happened several times already in the last three years. They also swear not to provide shelter to any extremist in their village, which makes it different for the extremists to move about. This has helped us a lot in our C.I. Ops against the extremists.