Constable Melvyn Cardozo is an important man. Correction: Suspended constable Melvyn Cardozo is a very important man. When the Goa government decided to suspend him for extorting money from tourists, which is bit of a local past time among many cops, it decided to disband the entire Local Intelligence Branch (LIB) in all police stations in Goa.
Constable Cardozo had apprehended a car carrying three tourist couples and threatened to book them in a case of prostitution unless he was paid money. A serious issue certainly but did not warrant disbanding an entire local unit of the state police?
It’s quite akin – albeit scaled down – to the CBI being disbanded because a constable in one unit made an extortion call. Or closer home, should the PWD get disbanded because the alleged corruption in that department would make constable Cardozo’s crime look like a teddy bear’s picnic game. And if we stretch this logically further, the Town and Country Planning Department shouldn’t be in existence at all, because according to the chief minister, the department has corrupt officials crawling out of the woodwork, or whatever remains of it after all has been “eaten”.
The decision to disband the ‘Local Intelligence Branch’ of all police stations in Goa is a knee jerk, unprofessional and completely detrimental to ground level intelligence gathering. And if this was done ostensibly to send a ‘message’, the message that it actually sent out is this. Soft targets like Cardozo – albeit deservedly – will be picked but the entire universe of policemen who have done worse – molestations, extortions, falsely planting drugs, beating up people in custody causing them to die and protecting criminals – will continue to float like free planets, while departments get disbanded. This will not end corruption. You close down one department, corruption will spring up elsewhere.
Meanwhile, policemen will commit crimes, sexually exploit women, take weekly collections from shopkeepers, restaurants and yes even drug runners even if there is no Local Intelligence Branch in every police station.
But there is another side to the story. The entire police force isn’t corrupt and nor are all officers of the Local Intelligence Branch. The disbanding of the entire cadre of LIU officers will severely impact local intelligence gathering in the towns and villages, especially in the coastal tourist belt where various issues crop up daily. The Russian influence, the Nigerian influence, the drug influence, issues related to prostitution and the looming threat of terrorists using Goa as a temporary hideout. Each of these issues are detected and investigations launched due to inputs from the local intelligence team, many of whom mingle with people closely, to bring back inputs that officers sitting in police stations or in the police headquarters never will. While this is done at all levels, a local intelligence unit does it perhaps more than others.
The problem with the Goa police or pretty much the entire system is that punishment is selective and often according to a ploy rather than according to a process. The police system needs a complete overhaul of massive proportions. The amendment to the Goa Police Bill which has been lying in cold storage and which the government has been reluctant to introduce needs to be passed with all the recommendations implemented, the most important of them being, removing functional control from the hands of politicians and restrict them to policy making, monitoring and periodic supervision. The chief minister of the state does not need to give directions to police station heads on how to solve cases.
Disbanding units of the police will not be as effective as disbanding politicians from interfering with the day to functioning of the force, including of appointments and transfers. Many Cardozos will automatically go out of the system once that is done.
