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By Rabi Raj Thapa

Security and peace seem to have taken a back seat again. This has disappointed Police personnel of both the Nepal Police and Armed Police once again. It is natural for young and aspiring officers to feel low when they have to wait at least ten years for one promotion, the government is pushing hard to deprive minimum organizational autonomy. 

 It is interesting to know that even in developed countries like the United States of America police agencies were confined as mere tools of the political apparatus. American police experts see its police agencies from 1840 to 1930 (90 years) as “American Police of Political Era”.  One of the police experts Walker noted, ‘The quality of American police service in the 19th century was completely unprofessional and police work was dominated by corruption and inefficiency. And the source of the problem was politics. 

Reform movements moved slowly against the solidly entrenched political ‘untouchables’.          

In 1929, US President Herbert Hoover appointed the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement to study the American criminal justice system. Then the Commission Chairman George Wickersham came up with one of the twelve reports titled ‘Lawlessness in Law Enforcement’.

Then the police officer August Vollmer who is also known as the “Father of Modern Police Administration’, and his protégé O. W. Wilson became the prime architect of a new style of American policing called the ‘Professional Model of Policing’. Vollmer also developed the first-degree granting program in law enforcement at San Jose State College.

One prime and major reform was they sought to disassociate policing from politics. Police mounted an all-out war on crime. Unfortunately, when the war on crime was losing, crimes began to escalate. Then many cities began to actively recruit monitors for their police departments.

In 1984, the US Congress created and funded the Law Enforcement Education Program (LEEP). By the mid-1970s, more than 1,000 academic institutions had police-related courses offered to thousands of students nationwide.

When social disapproval fails law enforcement must take over. And until the ‘social glue’ is restored to society, we can expect more not less, violence in the streets, more white-collar crime, more rape and misery….

Then came the community policing era in the 1980s in which the police totally changed its perception viewing people within the community as consumers of police services.

American police forces in the Community Era are characterized by 1) Authority coming from community support, law and professionalism, 2) Provisions of a broad range of services, including crime control, 3) Decentralized organization with more authority given to patrol officers, 4) An intimate relationship with the community, and use of foot-patrol and a problem-solving approach.

American police and policing during the reform era was more reactive while the community era police dedicated themselves more to pro-active policing. They focused and prioritized first finding the cause of crime and rectifying the problems thereby deterring events and preventing crime.

These are some simple rules adopted and followed by all modern, professional, service-oriented police organizations of the world. But the ongoing attention and gimmicks among the parliamentarians, political stakeholders and even oversight agencies seem to be backtracking towards the Political Era of American Policing.

Today, it is amazing to see that most aspiring federalists are either happy with the same old type of policing similar to that of the political era of American policing. However, it was former IGP D. B. Lama who had introduced the concept of community policing in Nepal. After three decades, the Nepal Police is a community police model in name, but political police in practice. At this juncture, it is unfortunate that both the new draft legislations have clauses that can possibly bring conflict among different tiers of law enforcement agencies primarily starting with the roles and responsibilities of Nepal Police and Armed Police.

Let the government be more serious and work along with experts and concerned stakeholders before it is too late.

(Some notes are excerpted from Henry M. Wrobleski and Karen M. Hess (1993), “Introduction to Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice published by West Publishing Company.)