Guwahati:Emphasising on ‘non-coercive’ policing in the city, the first Guwahati Police Commissioner Jyotirmoy Chakravarty has said improving police-public relations would be his priority.
The success of policing is centred around police-public relation and is the ‘basic necessity’ for better results, Chakravarty told PTI. “Guwahati Police’s philosophy will be non-coercive policing. We have to ensure law enforcement by consent, not by force.
This is going to be a long-term goal,” he said. Accepting that the image of police is not ‘very good’ in Assam, Chakravarty said not only the attitude of police has to change but the behaviour of people towards policemen also needs to improve.
“While we will internally work with our men in this direction, we will engage NGOs to make the public understand about self-policing for personal benefit. We will tie up with the groups to tell people that the police force is a friend of people,” he said.
Chakravarty said the police commissionerate system introduced in the city a month ago needed to work on a lot on many areas, including integration of different technologies for better investigation purposes. “We have lots of challenges, the major being the lack of infrastructure. It (commissionerate) is a new system and we need to work out the procedure. We will also need orientation for our men as it is not going to be traditional policing as most of our senior officials have magisterial power now. It will take around six months to fully settle down,” he added.
Chakravarty said the smaller size of Guwahati city and lesser population as compared to Delhi and Mumbai which also have the police commissionerate system, had its advantages. “Unlike many other big cities, human trafficking is less in Guwahati. But the city is not free from insurgency-related threat. Moreover, Guwahati is the gateway to the northeast and is a transit point.
It is a disadvantage,” he said. Asked about terrorism related threats, the chief of 3,000-personnel strong Guwahati Police said it has experts to deal with such situations as they have been dealing with insurgency for long. “… But a full fledged terror strike like 26/11 cannot be handled by the police alone.
For that, we need specialised agencies like NSG or Army,” he said. Chakravarty said Guwahati Police currently does not have any separate intelligence wing and will continue to share and get information from the parent Assam Police. Asked if Guwahati Police would have an anti-terrorism squad like Mumbai Police, the Police Commissioner said there was no immediate plan to raise one. “Every resource is need-based.
We have some resources and when we need it we will reorganise it as per intelligence input,” he said. On January 1 this year, Guwahati had joined the big cities in the country with the adoption of the police commissionerate system. Chakravarty is the first police commissioner of Guwahati city with all powers of a district magistrate. (PTI)
