AS Karachi’s newly appointed police chief Amir Ahmed Shaikh said recently after taking up his post, the megacity’s biggest problem remains street crime. The brutal murder of a young girl late on Monday night in a reported mugging attempt in the Gizri area has underscored the dangers street crime poses to citizens’ safety. Mr Shaikh said while talking to the media, that around 40 to 50 complaints related to street crime are being lodged at the city’s police stations on a daily basis. While the law-enforcement operation under way in the city since 2013 has brought down violent crime including targeted killings, kidnappings and extortion attempts, opportunistic street crime remains a major problem. Karachi’s top cop has also announced the launching of a dedicated WhatsApp number where citizens can lodge complaints, including against the “undesirable attitude” of the police, as well as the setting up of a cell for accountability of police. There is also a plan to post commandos at street crime ‘hotspots’. Similar efforts have been launched in the past, including a complaint cell inaugurated by the Sindh IG, but have not met with much success. One can only hope that this latest endeavour is effective in reforming the force and curbing the abuse of power.

The latter issue is not limited to Karachi; it affects the entire country at varying levels. Indeed, with new provincial governments taking charge, police reform should be at the top of the agenda of the dispensations. Much has been said and written about police reforms under the PTI’s previous administration in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Now with Imran Khan’s party back in the saddle in the province, and likely to form the government in Punjab as well, citizens will expect it to carry the reforms further to make the police truly accountable to the people. The PPP-led Sindh government, as well as the coalition set to take power in Balochistan, will also need to do much more to improve the performance of their respective provincial police set-ups. It bears repeating that the police are meant to protect and serve the citizenry, and the colonial mode of policing must be jettisoned in favour of community policing where members of the force know the areas, and the people, under their watch. For this to happen, though, internal accountability of the force, as well as external oversight by legislators and civil society, are essential.

Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2018