Lack of Police/Community relationship causing crime increase in the North
The Northern Region has seen escalating crimes cases in the first quarter of this year by 3.1% in crime as 1, 559 cases have been registered compared to 1, 512 cases registered in 2020 around the same period.
Northern Region Senior Deputy Commissioner of Police, Maximus Thomson Bakali, has attributed the increase to lack of cordial relationship between the Police and communities and has since called upon police officers to engage the public in this aspect in order to fight against crime in the region.
In the period under review, 296 traffic accidents have been registered in first three months of 2021 as compared to just 98 in 2020 around same period.
As one effort toward rebuilding this relationship, the region police management organized a Regional Community Policing meeting on Thursday to assess how police officers have performed in the first quarter of 2021.
In an interview, Bakali said for police officers to perform well in dealing with crime, they need to have cordial relationship among themselves as well as with the communities they serve.
He said when police officers build that relationship with the community it will be easy for the communities to give out information of criminal activities.
“The police should create a good relationship with people in the communities including different stakeholders so that they can serve the community well and also do more,” Bakali said.
He appealed to police officers to increase visibility in the community by conducting awareness activities and work together with stakeholders such as chiefs and business owners.
“We have noted that that crime has increased for the past three months, so I am appealing to police stations to revamp structures that are dead so that they can work together to fight crime,” he said.
On his part, Chairman for Regional Community Policing, Vincent Kalawa, emphasized on the need for the community and police to build a relationship that would work towards dealing with crime.
“There is need for co-existence among the communities, police and community policing structures because if there is such a relationship it is easy to share information,” he said.
Kalawa further said that as community policing they are worried with the increase in crime and traffic accidents.
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