People want cops to be honest and empathetic, says study
LUCKNOW The Uttar Pradesh Police top brass always lays stress on improvement of public perception of the police force, but an impact assessment study, conducted by an independent agency, has suggested improvement in their working style.
According to the study findings, people want police personnel to be honest, loyal, modest and empathetic, director general of police (DGP) OP Singh said.
The state police had hired the independent agency to conduct this study, which was done on a sample size of 3,625 people in the jurisdiction of 44 police stations of nine districts, between November 2018 and March 2019.
The study sought replies from people through computer-aided personal interviews and its details were recorded digitally.
Sharing the study findings with media person, the DGP said around 82 per cent of the people wanted police personnel to be honest. He added that 65 per cent of the surveyed people expected cops to be modest while 56 per cent expected them to be loyal and 35 per cent wanted them to empathetic.
He, however, added that the study revealed that 77 per cent of the surveyed people were satisfied with police functioning. He said the districts where surveys were carried out included Lucknow, Prayagraj, Gorakhpur, Ayodhya, Varanasi, Mathura, Agra, Gautam Buddhnagar and Jhansi.
The study also wanted the police to change their functioning strategy, as the replies of 61 per cent of the sample size wanted police deployment to be increased at public places, while 40 per cent wanted deployment of more women cops.
The DGP said the sense of security and safety was also checked with the responders that showed encouraging results. He said 85 per cent responders stated that they felt more secure in personal capacity as compared to previous year, 81 per cent responders felt that they were more secure at public places and 72 per cent felt they were more secure on highways.
He said 70 per cent responders feel that business fraternity is more safe and secure and 68 per cent feel that they are more secure during night hours.
Singh said 87 per cent of women responders feel themselves more secure while 76 per cent believed that crime against children had decreased and 82 per cent feel that crime against elderly people has decreased.
CORRUPT PRACTICE
The DGP said complaints of corruption being received at UP100 call centre will be integrated to the DGP control room and its time-bound monitoring will be done by additional DG (ADG) crime, ADG public grievances, ADG law and order and by himself.
He said he had been following ‘zero tolerance’ policy to eliminate corruption from the state government departments. He said traps for corrupt government officials by anti-corruption organisation of the state police were laid more in 2017, 2018 and 2019 as compared to 2014, 2015 and 2016. He said a total of 97 state government employees were arrested in 2014, 2015 and 2016 while 205 were arrested in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
MEDICAL FACILITY
The DGP said working and retired police personnel and their families will be provided medical facilities at 150 private hospitals of 14 districts on subsidized rates in accordance with the central government health scheme.