HE renewed
advocacy for community policing recommends community security as an
indispensable, integral part of the comprehensive crime-fighting strategy for
enhanced security nationwide. Adoption of the recommendation is not just
inevitable locally, in the face of the pervading crimes, but common globally,
since the practice is rooted in people’s right to organise to defend themselves
against criminals.
Besides, as recognised by the police, the community watch
will render invaluable assistance of supplying necessary information on
criminals. Without the relevant information from the public or members of a
neighbourhood, the police cannot successfully discharge their cardinal,
constitutional functions of detecting, preventing crimes and arresting
offenders. Because the police, like all human beings, are not ubiquitous, it is
impossible for them to be always at the scene of most crimes. Again, criminals
are members of the society, and as such, they can easily be identified to the
police by members of the community.
But community policing or the community watch has ever
existed in this country, in form of vigilance groups, particularly in cities and
other urban areas. Although a number of them have been intermittently disbanded,
on account of their excesses, such vigilance groups have inevitably and steadily
sprouted in our crime-infested society, ineffectively guarded by the police,
hamstrung by inadequate logistics - shortage of manpower and dearth of modern
equipment.
Even so, in advocating community policing, the police rightly
insist it must be a reformed community security, composed of credible citizens
and cured of such excesses as jungle justice and illegal possession of arms.
Also, the community will be responsible for supply of security equipment and the
upkeep of the personnel, while the police reserve the overall right to
coordinate and supervise the operations of the community security.
But, if community policing must work effectively and
creditably, the police ought to take more concrete steps. Prospective members of
the community watch, vigilance groups or committees should be screened to ensure
they are credible members of the community. In recent years, vigilance groups
have been infiltrated, or even predominated by ethnic militias, and this has
been largely responsible for their excesses. Even then, the properly selected
personnel should be trained and issued guideline’s on the groups’ operations, to
ensure lawful performance. Additionally, the vigilance groups should be
permitted to bear certain category of arms to effectively deter criminals.
The whole security arrangement is not likely to achieve its
purpose, if the vigilance groups are left without proper code, supervision and
equipment, or are seen merely as thugs tearing innocent passers-by apart, or as
toothless bull dogs. For the overall check, committees or task forces, made up
of credible police officers and personnel or other security forces, should be
established to monitor the operations of approved and registered vigilance
groups. There may be no surer way of constituting intelligence networks to
expose criminals in the communities.
Yet, there is a snag. Because of the lack of cordial
relationship and mutual trust between the police and the public, Nigerians are
not willing to volunteer information that will lead to the detection and
prevention of crimes. A member of the community can only volunteer necessary
information if he is sure he will not be betrayed or his identity revealed.
Often, there have been allegations of cases where the reported criminals get to
know the individuals who reported them to the police. Such informers are often
put at risk in the hands of the criminals.
Again, because of the police’s inability to halt the rising
rate of violent crimes and the slow dispensation of justice, Nigerians have for
long lost confidence in the country’s security and criminal justice system and
resorted to jungle justice. In a number of cases, suspects arrested and handed
over by the community to the police are unduly released by the latter. The slow
process of dispensing justice is accentuated by court congestion and the
sluggish procedure of law application.
So, in their desperate attempt to check the ever-pervading
violent crimes nationwide, particularly in urban areas, mobsters and vigilance
groups are daily taking it upon themselves to arrest and kill suspected robbers,
murderers and burglars, and other criminals, and destroy property of their
suspected collaborators. Until necessary steps are taken to restore the public’s
confidence, the people may continue to take the law into their hands.
Above all, until the grounds of the public’s suspicion of the police are
cleared, both parties may not cooperate properly in the matter of community
policing. By organising themselves into vigilance groups, Nigerians are only
assisting the police whose duty is to protect them and their property. What is
left is taking the necessary steps to let the community watch work effectively.
