With the onset of the holiday season and expected tourists likely to come in big numbers for the Mega Hornbill Festival, any unfavorable law and order situation may lead to both embarrassment for the State government and loss for the local economy as well. Against this backdrop, the State government should step up security across the State and more importantly put in place pre-emptive security measures. A high level security meeting should be convened by the Chief Minister’s Office with the administrative and police heads from all the district headquarters. Contingency plans must be drawn up to thwart any designs of anti-social elements including extortionists who will no doubt step up their activities as Christmas and New Year approaches. Similar security coordination meetings can be later organized at the respective district levels with civil society groups and citizen groups.
The State machinery must also enhance intelligence gathering to curb unwanted activities that may disturb public peace and order. Prevention and detection of crime mainly depends upon timely information received by the Police from the public. Many good citizens are willing to share information about crime and criminals, but for fear of being exposed, they do not come forward and hence they keep the information to themselves. A way has to be worked out to access public information. The feasibility of having a toll free phone number for public to convey crime intelligence/ information to the police will no doubt remove apprehensions and difficulties coming in the way of maintaining public interface.
Necessary plans must also be made to increase highway patrols across the State as there is bound to be an increase in travel of public to their hometowns and villages for their holidays. Banks and market must also be routinely monitored and sanitized so that such public places are not easy targets for desperate elements. It goes without saying that to be effective and successful; the police must enjoy the trust, confidence and respect of the people living in the jurisdiction. Improving police-public relationship will go a long way in effectively preventing violation of law and to detect crimes that may occur.
Selected NGOs could be roped in to involve them in community oriented policing. This will lead to optimization of available police resources and eliciting maximum citizen’s participations. This has a better chance of ensuring result oriented effective policing on ground. Community policing will also instill uncertainty and fear among mischief mongers and act as a strong deterrent against anti-social elements. The recent instances of public spirited local groups taking initiatives to maintain peace and order in towns and villages goes to show that at the end, conventional methods of uniform policing may turn out to be less effective to deter the lawless elements.
And with the onset of the festive season round the corner, beginning with the mega hornbill festival and State inauguration day all the way through to Christmas and New Year, there is a strong case for increased vigilance on the part of the police and law enforcing machinery of the State government so as to ensure that no untoward incident is allowed to happen.
