WHY THE NAME “
FRIENDS OF POLICE “ ?
Introduction:
Since the late 1960s, attempts to change the police have been a blend of suggestions that emerged during the Reform Era and those that are part of what the authors call the Service Model. The Reform Era produced reforms that critics considered to be too bureaucratic and confrontational, a relationship that was made worse by police isolation from the community. In effect, citizen concerns were subordinated to the desire to professionalize police. Since this situation was not satisfactory and crimes were escalating, new solutions were sought to bring normalcy in the crime scenario. Starting of the Friends of Police Movement was a case in point.
- Friendship,
is mutually cooperative and supportive behaviour
between two or more people in the sense that the term connotes a
relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, affection, and respect
along with rendering service to community in general and individuals
in particular in times of need or crisis.
- The
FOP concept is derived from the philosophy of friendship
that human relationships have a value of their own and operate
on a quid pro quo basis. Benefits derived by both sides are incidental.
The Movement binds the police and the public in a symbiotic relationship
that draws strength from mutual warmth and good will. It is an
attempt to make the police, people-friendly and the people,
police-friendly.
- Community
policing aims at bringing about partnership between the police and the
public while the FOP Movement tries to bring about an identification
of the public with the police.
- The
type of friendship involving the police and the public , to say the least,
is non-personal. It indicates an affinity or mutuality of purpose between
two parties, representing communities in general. FOP also employs
Social Psychology which is a type of Social Science that is concerned with
individual thoughts, feelings and behaviour as they affect or are affected
by other individuals.
- The
FOP Movement was started in 1993 by Dr. Prateep V. Philip while he was the
SP, Ramanathapuram. The reason for starting the movement there at that
time was need-based – to contain frequent communal clashes there. A survey
of constables from all police stations in Ramanathapuram revealed that
many of them thought that the very nature of their job denied them new
friendship and also cost old friends. Psychological studies reveal that
prolonged deprivation of the warmth of human relations gives rise to
dehumanizing tendencies and aberrant behaviour .Every friendly human contact,
it was found, has a therapeutic and humanizing effect.
- FOP
has demonstrated that Community Policing is based on the notion that
police cannot protect the public by their own unaided efforts.
Support from the public is an absolute must.
- Conclusion:
Fear is a matter of reality and police has to reduce it.
Maintenance of law and order is the raison d’etre for which police force was
conceived and it continues to be its important mandate. Perhaps, our worst
crime is ignorance about crime. Our easy satisfaction with headlines and the
accounts of lurid cases and our smug satisfaction that it is all a matter of
some tough bad guys
whom the tough good guys will soon capture will no longer be
tenable. The most important item in the Community Policing agenda is Human
Rights literacy programme to educate people on the need to be aware of their
fundamental rights. The need is rather crucial in the sense that offering
rights to an illiterate person who has no means of appreciating their value is
like offering a piece of sugar cane to some one who has no teeth !
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