From tackling crime the police now have to be policing lockdown and curfew violators and people not maintaining social distancing. This is a new role for the police and one they are perhaps not adequately trained for. Sure the police have been trained to handle natural disasters under the Disaster Management Act but they haven’t had much exposure to the Epidemic Diseases Act 1897, amended on April 22, this year. Of course the Act specifically addresses violence committed on healthcare professionals – a phenomenon which is common in India. Policing during a pandemic poses special challenges because there are no specific guidelines or well-defined roles on how police should be responding to the health emergency as witnessed today. To be policing an entire population to ensure they don’t come out of their homes is a phenomenal task. Just as it is unnatural for people to isolate themselves for over a month, it is also near impossible for police to enforce the isolation in every locality, city or village. The lockdown announced hastily on March 24 with a gap of only three hours before its implementation caught citizens off-guard and turned them into nervous wrecks. But the police who are also human were expected to face the brunt of the lockdown and be on the streets guarding people from exposing themselves to the virus. In fact, policemen only had each other to boost their morale. Thankfully, in Meghalaya no police personnel are infected as yet and hopefully will stay immune from the virus.
When some shops reopened after the lockdown police had to control crowding and sometimes even impose fines on people violating curfew timings. Police have drawn flak for not being sensitive to the emergent needs of citizens including those that require medical attention. Police follow standard operating procedures and the constable on the road is in no position to relax the rules for that would lead to undesirable arbitrariness. This is where close coordination between the police and the village/town committees formed in every locality to deal Covid 19 is called for. People facing medical and other emergencies need to contact the Committees which will then alert the police control room so that the message travels down to the constable manning the roads through which the person has to pass. With a police-population ratio of only 192 per one lakh population in India policing during the pandemic is no mean task. However, this health emergency has also taught some valuable lessons for the police higher-ups. Henceforth all police training schools should include medical emergency and police responses in their syllabus. This would call for a paradigm shift in protocols to enhance their performance. We need an empathetic police; not a police state.
