Thaindian News

New Delhi, Feb 1 (ANI): Emphasising on the need of better policing, the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh today said that we need to closely examine the functioning of police stations and bring forth changes to make policemen truly people friendly.

Addressing the Chief Ministers on internal security here, Dr. Singh said: Training of officer is more in focus now. More efforts required in refresher courses. We need to change behavior with people friendly attitude.”

” Till such time we cannot upgrade their skills and bring about a change in their behaviour and attitude - an attitude of ’service of the people’ - we will not succeed in our efforts to set up a truly people-friendly and professionally competent and very good police force in our states and our country,” he added.

He further said that we need to take three pronged action on community policing, police reforms and informed use of technology respectively to make this happen.

Emphasising that the Centre and the states should work together to formulate guidelines for community policing, Dr. Singh said: “Bridging the gap of mistrust that exists between the police and community will go a long way in collecting actionable intelligence.”

“This also brings me to the idea of involving the academia and professionals, who are experts in the field of data mining and cyber security, in policing,” he added.

He further said: “I am told that the Kerala Police recently organized an international conference on the subject.”

“We need more such discussions to learn from international experience in community policing,” he added.

Expressing his concern over the vulnerability of under-privileged, Dr. Singh said: “The need for our police officer to be particularly sensitive to the problems faced by the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, minorities, women and elderly citizens.

“It is a shame for all of us that atrocities against the SCs and STs still continue to persist in our country. Its the duty our policemen that no case of atrocities against these under-privilege groups goes unpunished,” he added.

He said: “I would expect the State Governments to be alive to the need of protecting our women against violence by doing their very best to ensure punishment to the perpetrators of such violence.”

“We cannot continue to police our society with archaic laws and policing systems. We are aware that many Police Commissions have made various recommendations on police reforms,” he added.

He further said that he would like the Ministry of Home Affairs to carry forward this exercise to its logical conclusion in the Union Territory of Delhi during the coming years so that Delhi Police becomes a model for other state police forces to emulate. (ANI)