The many shades of policing during a crisis

Context: The ways in which the police have enforced the lockdown have invoked both admiration and scorn. 

Positive shades

• Creating awareness: Officers in Chennai and Hyderabad have been using helmets resembling the virus.

• Tackling fake and misinformation: Police units in Assam and Maharashtra have used social media in innovative ways to escalate the cyber cell.

• Relief Efforts: In Assam, Punjab, Karnataka and Maharashtra, the police have been distributing food, hand sanitisers and other essentials to the poor. 

• Community engagement: by roping in NGOs and other organisations into relief works. 

Negative Shades

• Excessive harassment : 

• Trust deficit: Through assault and lathi charge and reports of destruction of essential commodities.
• The continuance of such a modus operandi has the risk of retaliation from the public, 

• Callousness rooted in sub-culture: their sense of commitment to the rule of law is overpowered by a value system of police sub-culture which demands them to be ‘tough’.

Justification of highhandedness:

• Exceptional circumstances:  generating stressful conditions due to lockdown.

• Overworked police force: 

• As much as 90% of the official work for more than 8 hours a day (The Economist, 2014).  
• Only 144 police officers per 1,00,000 citizens, against 222 recommended by the UN.

• Lack of cooperation from the public: due to paranoia associated with the virus has resulted in instances of violence against the police officers by the public.

• Erroneous perception: Individual police indulging in unlawful behavior brings disrepute and loss of credibility to the police as a organization.

• Ambiguous laws: MHA guidelines which on one hand allow police to be quick in responses and on the other states were uncertain, such flexibility decreases their accountability.

Way Forward:

• Compassionate leadership: to be able to take an effective managerial and supervisory role 

• Public Cooperation: Partnership with other stakeholders must be scaled up through community policing  which will increase the trust and lower the burden of police.