News
Community police revived to combat crime
As an urgent measure to fight crime, the Law and Order Ministry is to revive the community police system that played an important role during the war period, Ministry Secretary Jagath Wijeweera said.
He told the Sunday Times that a community police unit with the area Grama Niladhari serving as secretary would be set up in each of the 14,445 Grama Niladhari divisions.
Mr. Wijeweera said a religious leader would be the patron of the unit, which would include a principal, a police officer, public sector officials, especially those representing the health and child care sectors, and even politicians.
The unit would meet twice a month to discuss the crimes that had taken place over the previous two weeks in its area and look into the possibility of solving them, he said.
The Ministry Secretary said that if the unit failed to solve the crimes, it would forward such cases to the District Committee which would include, among others, the provincial chief minister or a cabinet minister as its chairman and the Government Agent as its secretary.
The Convener of the District Committee, which would meet once a month, would be the Deputy Inspector General of Police of the area.“We believe this arrangement will help us combat crime and gather information,” Mr. Wijeweera said.
Superintendent Muditha Pussella, director in charge of community policing affairs at Police Headquarters, said he believed the scheme with its network of information gathering would be useful to solve crimes.
He said the presence of the public sector representatives in the units would be important as they could be of help to solve cases involving their fields.
“If it is a criminal case relating to fishing, we will need the help of fisheries officials to solve it,” SP Pussella explained.
He said that during the war period the community police service was active and had built up a good network, but since the end of the war, the network had broken down and now the time had come to revive it to curb the rising crime rate.