Every time there is a Sagar Kavach exercise in the State, and it happens at regular intervals, the police successfully nab the decoy ‘terrorists’ before they can reach their intended target and claim success. There may be smiles and backslapping in the police barracks that evening on a job well done, but there is no relief for the people, who have to suffer through long traffic jams, delays and checking because of the training exercise.
In today’s high alert world security drills are important and the people are also required to cooperate. That cannot be denied, but the purpose of this exercise is almost always defeated because there is little seriousness shown by the police when undergoing it. How serious they are when conducting this exercise can be gauged by their almost lifeless stance on the roads and checkpoints. The security agencies are well aware that this is merely an exercise, that the decoy vehicle is not carrying any arms and they adopt a body language that says they couldn’t care less. It is not uncommon to see in a group of five policemen at least one of them standing aside and carrying out a conversation on the cell phone.
The irony of the ‘success’ of this exercise is that in real life the police have rarely been successful. Leave aside catching real terrorists who would plan every move and pre-empt every police reaction, the Goa Police is incapable of arresting the common thief and pickpocket that roams the streets and beaches of the State. Their intelligence gathering is such that the Goa Police woke up to the open sale of narcotics on the coastal belt of Bardez only after Herald reported this. A few days later they deployed more personnel in the area and increased patrolling. If that’s how the police department works, getting its leads from newspapers rather than gathering intelligence for itself, then it is not a surprise that crime figures are rising annually.
For further proof of how inefficient the police department is, one has to only look at the crime figures, especially burglaries and dacoities. In the past few months the number of crimes being reported has been increasing, but the detection rate has not shown any corresponding increase. So bankrupt is the police force in Goa that the smallest of victories will do to claim disproportionate credit for it.
On Monday, Goa Police announced a cash reward to two police patrol teams that ‘almost caught’ thieves by chasing them. The thieves were not caught, they escaped, but so desperate is the police department to claim efficiency on the part of its officers and staff that it rewards them for almost doing what they should have done. It is admitted that the policemen showed a lot of gumption in chasing the car with the thieves, but that is expected of them. We would like to see more policemen showing the same initiative. There will be no country in the world where people are rewarded for ‘almost doing’ what they should have done. Before announcing the reward, did the police brass stop to think what would have happened if the men who escaped had been terrorists? They should have, for just two days later the police department undertook the Sagar Kavach exercise and here they did not fail.
There can be no room for complacency in policing matters. Goa is approaching its peak tourism season. This is the time of the year when the largest number of people will be descending upon the State. This is the time when the most number of traffic jams will take place, the number of parties will increase and the number of crimes will rise. There is urgent need for professionalism in policing and the next few weeks will be the test of policing efficiency.
For the Goa Police ‘almost doing’ may be good enough. For the people of this State it is definitely not. This State deserves a better, a more efficient, a more professional, a more alert police force. The people want a police force that is proactive in all matters rather than just reactive. The department has to change the way it works so as to bring about efficiency in the force and build confidence among the people in its abilities.
