Police Officers: Defenders or Desperadoes?
Body cams and cams in police stations are needed to root out criminal behavior
Police officers are responsible for protecting the lives, property, and honour of the people, enforcing law and order, preventing crimes, responding to emergencies, and so on.
However, across the globe some police officers instead of fulfilling their duties are allegedly involved in criminal activities. Police officers in United Kingdom, United States of America, Pakistan, India, and other parts of the world have been found guilty of engaging in crimes.
Guardians can turn into gangsters
Police worldwide face criminal charges of murdering, raping, extorting money, robbing people, distorting evidence, killing innocent people in fake encounters, keeping people in illegal detention, drug trafficking, arresting people without arrest warrants, and so on.
In England and Wales, more than and staff were convicted of crimes including sexual offenses, violence, and theft in 2023.
In United States of America, a , revealed that at least 1800 state and local law enforcement officers were charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse from 2005–2022.
As per the data from —a non profit research group of USA—at least 1,353 people were killing in America at the hands of the police last year. That site says that the 2023 was the deadliest year for police violence.
In 2024 so far, 1,041 people in US.
Criminals in uniform
In Pakistan, police are involved in kidnapping traders and wealthy people for ransom, land grabbing, facilitating criminals, and raping and sexually assaulting women.
A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report entitled “,” released in 2016 documented a range of human rights violations committed by the police including arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and extrajudicial killings.
Sometimes criminals grease the palms of police officers to distort the crime scene evidence while other cops may follow the practice under political and peer pressure. In India, police brutalities and atrocities are normalized when fake criminal cases are fabricated against innocent people who are forced to confess the crime which they haven’t committed.
Indian police stations are termed as human rights threats when women are gang-raped by the law enforcement officers inside the lock-ups and other human rights violations are committed behind bars. Chief Justice of India Nuthalapati Ramana said in 2021 that Indian .
The involvement of the police officers in sexual and criminal offenses make them more dangerous than the criminals.
People –especially in India and Pakistan—avoid going to police stations even to get their First Information Report (FIR) registered because of the prevalent culture of harassment and exploitation by the police force. Their criminal behaviour turned police stations into dangerous places; rather than providing safety they became dens of criminals. Corruption, misuse of powers, violation of human rights and abuse are endemic in the policing system. People who are supposed to control crimes are themselves involved in the criminal activities.
Bring cops to heel
Police officers indulging in criminal activities is a global problem and it needs global solutions. Police misconduct not only creates a lack of trust in the public regarding police but also creates hatred.
Because of some notorious police officers, police departments are losing their honour and credibility in the eyes of people. People term police as “corrupt, rapists, and murderers.”
In order to stop police from engaging in criminal activities it is imperative to take pragmatic measures. CCTV cameras should be installed in police stations and it should be made mandatory for police officers to wear body cameras that can’t be turned off by the officers. They should be monitored by the honest officers and those found to be involved in misconduct need to be weeded out from the force. Not only should corrupt police officers be terminated from their jobs but laws should be made that their heirs would ot be eligible for the government jobs if they are found of guilty of violating human and constitutional rights.
The force needs also to be freed from political pressure and influence.
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