Maravi

Police and You

Police and You
By Editor
Wed 23 June 2010, 04:00 CAT

At the risk of being seen to be propping up the political fortunes of Col Panji Kaunda, we are forced to comment on the very important observations he has made on the police.

No one can deny that policing in this country has become a big political issue because of the way the police has been behaving. And Col Panji has picked this subject at the right time and in the right way.

Col Panji says: “I think most of us are still questioning the independence of the judiciary. Currently I have more complaints in the police command just because there are more cadres than independent police in the police service. The next government, if need be, should retrain the police command. It happened in Zambia sometime back.

When the police went off-rail, they called an emergency to retrain the police command so that they should go back to what the police used to be, a neutral body. We want a police that could investigate matters and not to be told ‘you go and arrest so and so’. When you complain, they say ‘we are going to arrest you’. It is not the job of a minister to order a policeman to go and arrest a person; the job of a minister is to put policies in place and to supervise those policies. We want to see a police that investigates issues in their own way by looking at our laws. They should follow the law not because this man is MMD, PF or UPND. The law should be the law.”

We agree with everything Col Panji has said about our police. And we don’t think any honest person will disagree with what Col Panji has said about our police service.

We are trying to build a democracy in this country. And this democratic enterprise requires an appropriate type of police service. We need a police service that is subject to the rule of law embodying values respectful of human dignity, rather than the wishes of the president and his political party. We also need a police service that can intervene in the lives of citizens only under limited and carefully controlled circumstances and is publicly accountable. These conditions are inherent to police in a country that wants to be seen as a democracy. Police is an important factor in building a democracy. And its importance increases with the heterogeneity and size of a society.

But we know that the powers that the police are given offer great temptations for abuse on behalf of the authorities controlling them. We say this because law enforcement requires a delicate balancing act. The conflicts between liberty and order receive their purest expression in considerations of democratic policing.

The general political framework of a country involving the means of choosing leaders and establishing rules may show a degree of independence from the organisation and activities of police even though there is some link between them.

It is ironic that police are both a major support and a major threat to democratic society. When police operate under the rule of law, they may protect democracy by their example of respect for the law and by suppressing crime. Police are moral, as well as legal, actors.

But apart from the rule of law and public accountability, the police power to use force and arrest citizens can be used to support dictatorial and tyrannical regimes, powerful vested interest groups and practices. When this happens, the policing of crime and politics merge and political dissent becomes a crime. And when that happens, the police function may not be clearly differentiated from and may overlap that of the security services – the military or national intelligence agencies. This may also involve co-operation with ruling party vigilantes or cadres or the police themselves becoming vigilante groups. This is what we are starting to see in this country where the police is seen in the same way as the military or the intelligence agencies; where the police chief is treated in the same way as the army, air force, Zambia National Service and intelligence chiefs. And today, ruling party cadres like William Banda seem to be part of the police while the police chief himself is seen to be a cadre of the ruling party through his conduct.

Police powers cannot be subverted in this way; cannot be used in this way. Police powers should be used according to the rule of law and not according to the whims of the President or the Inspector General of Police. The police, as the arm of the state’s power, must be used in a restrained fashion and proportional to the problem. We want to return to the situation where citizens would accept police authority out of respect rather than out of intimidation. A professional police service is defined by both its means and its ends. Some means are simply too abhorrent and must be prohibited under any circumstances.

Dirty policing should never be accepted in this country. Everything the police does should be within the law and in accordance with the due process of the law. And due process does not refer to questions of guilt or innocence, but with the way in which guilt is determined. The laws that the police enforce, their resources and the way they use their power in enforcing laws should be determined by a democratic process involving varying degrees of openness, oversight and accountability to the public.

We should never allow our police to be a law unto themselves. In spite of strong pressures and temptations to the contrary, they should never be allowed to act in an explicitly political fashion, such as disrupting the activities of groups they disagree with or failing to enforce the law against groups they support. In our plural society, in a society in which the constitution promotes multiparty politics and political diversity, the police must never be allowed to serve partisan interests of the political party in power, or the party they would like to see in power. Their purpose must never be to enforce political conformity. Holding unpopular beliefs or behaving in unconventional, yet legal, ways is not adequate ground for interfering with citizens’ liberties. When opponents of democracy operate within the law, police have an obligation to protect their rights, as well as the rights of others. In an important sense, a professional police is a politically neutral police. For example, in an industrial or labour dispute, police are not to take sides, nor should they disrupt the legal actions of an opposition political party.

We should strive for equal law enforcement. All the citizens of this country should be treated in equivalent ways. Our police officers should be trained to behave in a universalistic fashion. Should their personal attitude depart from the demands of the role they are playing, this must not affect their behaviour. Police show neutrality if they simply enforce the rules in equivalent context regardless of the characteristics of the persons or groups involved.

The police play a very big symbolic role. As representatives of the nation, the police should be trained to see themselves as exemplars of moral behaviour. They have a duty to protect democratic liberties while maintaining effectiveness against crime and disorder. And this potential for abuse of police powers in itself calls for numerous external and internal controls. An important task of a democratic society is to guard against the misuse of physical, psychological and moral coercion by police as well as to uphold human, civil and social rights and dignity in an equitable manner. And as long as we continue to strive for more and more democracy, we will experience a continual attention between our desire for order and the desire for liberty.

Both are essential. A professional police will seek to avoid the extremes of either anarchy or repression. A police whose power is too great is a danger. A democratic society needs protection both by the police and from the police.
There is need for the Zambian people and their leaders to pay a lot of attention to the way the police is conducting its work. There is no doubt that the political authorities in charge of the police and the police command have lost it. The Zambia Police Service has been rendered impotent because of its transformation into a ruling MMD vigilante or cadre extension. Francis Kabonde, the current Inspector General of Police, has proved to be the worst police chief this country has seen. And it is a risk for the nation to continue with him at the helm of the police command as we prepare for next year’s elections.

Labels: PANJI KAUNDA, POLICE, POLICE BRUTALITY

posted by MrK @ 5:57 PM