National Police Division - A Structural Change in Policing of Pakistan

nbsp;What happened in Sindh Police recently is a rare event to show that Police have become sensitive to their image in public and the governance of the country. However, it is a beginning towards an end to reshaping Pakistan Police as per the demands of the public and the times we live in.nbsp; Police and Policing in Pakistan is a permanent topic for all media. Every newsgroup and media channel has recruited crime reporters who play a pivotal part in the success or failure of the newsgroup. Police Reforms have been a live topic like population planning and as poorly implemented as population planning since 1955 or even earlier. It resulted in an increase in problems of governance, like population, in the country. The latest attempt is being made by the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan by the serving and retired officers as practitioners of Policing under the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan lately. There is a need to address policing issues from the structural level to the operational level. I will confine this piece to the structural part for brevity.nbsp; From the structural point of view, the administration of the Police is in the hands of a generalist cadre who were once appointed by the British Raj for the perpetuation of their colonial rule in India from 1857 onwards. The home office was designed for British offices to control Police, revenue collectors and judicial officers. After the passage of time, judiciary and tax collection systems have been withdrawn from this office so they are left with only Police, prisons and probationary officers. Even prosecution is taken out of their purview. However, the Police are still under the Home office in the provinces and the centre, which is in contravention of Police Order 2002 which grants complete financial and administrative autonomy to the Provincial Police Officer as Secretary to the Government like any other department. However, custodians of Colonial rule have surrounded the successive decision makers to hamper the implementation of Police Order 2002 in letter and spirit since its inception.nbsp; In provinces, Home departments and in the Federal government, the Interior Division keeps administrative and financial resources under its control to prevent Police from operating independently. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police was able to take a step forward in 2017 but the Home office still exists there to represent IGP who is a much more senior and experienced officer than the Home Secretary in all cases. Sindh Police also tried to attain administrative and financial autonomy but they could not succeed. Balochistan Police is also a strange story where the role of Police was confined to 5% area only after the 2008 elections. Islamabad, AJK and GB Police are still working under the Police Act of 1864 whereas provinces have leapt forward but not long enough.nbsp; Ironically, PO 2002 was implemented in all of the country but Islamabad, the seat of the government in 2002. Islamabad Police Chief is under Commissioner Islamabad and Interior Division. It is important to note that the Interior Division in the federal government controls almost 14 attached departments and autonomous bodies including NADRA, NACTA, Passport and Immigration officer, FIA, Islamabad Police, National Forensics Science Agency and Civil Armed Forces like FC, Rangers and Coast Guards to name a few. Functions, forms, roles, and responsibilities of such a huge division which controls almost 30% of the whole of Federal administrative component, are so diverse and demanding that no one officer can do justice to this job. Before the promulgation of the 18th Constitutional Amendment, it was the most important pillar of the federal government as the provincial police was under the control of the Interior division. From a purely managerial perspective, it is not feasible or recommended to put more than ten grade 22 officers under an officer of the same rank and from other cadres. The workload is enormous. However, power and lust for power of humans have no limits.nbsp; Another anomaly in the Pakistan Police administration is the control of human resources by Establish Division, another tool of bureaucratic control over Policing in the country. All important positions in the Establishment Division are historically kept for bureaucracy and Police officers are never given any role in career planning and placement of Police officers, except with rare exceptions of one or two officers in the last 73 years. Resultantly, career planning, capacity building, welfare and placement of Police officers in and out of the country remain under the control of the Establishment division. Due to control over the above critical matters of service, Police officers rarely utter a single word, even in recommendations, against this perpetual control machinery of bureaucracy fearing reprisals by them. It is also convenient for politicos to control the Police through bureaucrats because of the internal rivalry between DMG and Police officers - a continuation of the divide-and-rule policy of the British Raj.nbsp;As per research conducted by USAID in 2013, there are 12 different laws and mechanisms for accountability of Police in the country. These arrangements range from internal accountability to CM and PM inspection teams, Anti-Corruption Establishments, ombudspersons of veracious subjects, administrative secretaries, monitoring units, NAB and courts to mention a few. Many of them include overlapping jurisdictions and conflicting mandates. Clarity of these issues and jurisdictions also takes years for people who have to go through these mechanisms. The motive of accusing someone of any issue of abuse of authority, corruption or involvement in corrupt practices is to grind him in the process and defame him rather to prove him guilty. There might be professional reasons for initiation of disciplinary proceedings or criminal cases without any political or personal motivations but such cases are lesser in number. At times it is political, annoyance of senior officers, not toeing the unwritten laws of comradery, not accepting sifarish of senior officers of civil and police bureaucracy, political masters, journalists or important persons from law enforcement agencies. In this environment, the whole process of accountability itself becomes questionable and it fails to achieve its purpose.nbsp;There is always a mantra about the accountability of Police by certain power centres who want to maintain their hegemony of other occupational groups of civil services. In the presence of multiple forums of accountability, there is hardly any need for another layer of bureaucracy over a 22-grade Police officer who is also doing the same job. It is a mockery that, almost at all times, in all provinces, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) is a senior officer than the Home Secretary but by the Home Secretary being a DMG officer, exercises control over all Police including IGP who is himself a secretary to the government. It means there are two administrative secretaries for Police departments. In this light, it is important to rethink the role of Home departments different from than colonial set ups of the British Raj who wanted to retain control of administrative, financial and law-making processes with the home office. The same rule is being played by the Interior Division related to FIA, Islamabad Police, National Police Academy, GB Police and Civil Armed Forces in addition to other departments and autonomous bodies they keep under its ever-expanding umbrella of bureaucratic control and power. Considering the above, meaningful and practical proposals for police autonomy to develop a culture of rule of law cannot be expected from permanent champions of reforms or other so called “advisors” of the governments mostly from bureaucracy or their kith and kin through business or matrimonial alliances.nbsp;For uniformity of policing functions in the country, there should be a single uniform law for policing in the country doing away with overlapping jurisdictions and standardization of the business processes. PO 2002, is already available. Implementation is needed. For Police autonomy in Pakistan, there is a need to establish a new division at the federal level. For implementation purposes, the National Police Bureau (NPB) should be made an independent National Police Division (NPD) under a Minister Incharge which may also be the Prime Minister. The following should be the main responsibilities of this National Police Division (NPD). nbsp;nbsp;NPD, under the leadership of a senior police officer as secretary of the division, should be Incharge of the following Police functions among other things:1.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Policy and Management of LEAs like FIA, National Forensics Science Agency, Islamabad Police, AJK and GB Police and coordination with others.2.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Police human resources management for senior command3.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Career Planning4.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Training and Capacity Building through National Police Academy5.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Foreign Secondments6.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Welfare of Police Officers serving, retired and martyred7.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Internal Accountability8.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Establishment Division and Interior Division should have no role in above matters.9.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Regulation and oversight of Private Security Agencies10.nbsp; Control of Arms and Ammunitions Licenses etc.11.nbsp;All other matters related to above including, but not limited to, advice to the Prime Minister, coordination for internal security operations and policies, summaries, law making proposals, foreign missions, etc which are part of the scope of Interior Division so far.nbsp;At provincial level make Police a full department taking them out of colonial hegemony of the Home departments by amendments in the rules of business of respective provinces. Therefore, full-fledged Provincial Police Departments should be notified under the IGP as their secretaries as envisaged in the PO 2002. This shows the detrimental role of bureaucracy which does not want to implement an act of parliament in letter and spirit to retain their control. If the parliament has approved a law why can the rules of business not be amended which were recently amended for the creation of a secretariat for South Punjab? Why Police cannot be made an independent department from its existing status of an attached department? Because they do not want to change the status quo in their favour? One such proposal was already floated in Punjab Police in 2019 but could not be approved due to the nexus of bureaucracy which remained averse to moving ahead with the proposals to retain control of Policing functions in the province in their hands.nbsp;If we summarise the problems of the Police at the structural level, in one sentence, it is a lack of Police autonomy in administrative, financial and operational matters. British raj is still prevailing in Pakistan in the form of archaic controls of various types. The syndrome of slavery takes centuries to be treated. Cure from syndromes of slavery is in freedom from inefficient control mechanisms and in the prevalence of the rule of law.NB: These are personal views of the author and do not represent any organization or group of people and subjected to change as I learn more from others! nbsp;