Community policing project fails

Community policing, an initiative started by the Gurgaon police about a year ago to bridge the gap between the community and the police department, has failed.

Community policing, an initiative started by the Gurgaon police about a year ago to bridge the gap between the community and the police department, has failed.

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The idea was to give the residents’ welfare associations (RWAs) and other social organisations a platform to assist the police in maintaining law and order as well as traffic.

However, the project remained limited only to issuance of identity cards.

The police had appointed 50 people as traffic wardens and another 100 as security wardens. Each of them was given an identity card and a place to sit in the nearest police station, the police officials said.

However, the exercise failed because of lack of interaction between the wardens and the police. The validity of the identity cards also expired and most of them were not renewed.

“Our RWA representatives were a part of the initiative. Even the previous police commissioner participated actively and held meetings with the officials at his office every month. But since past one year, nothing has been happening,” said Dharam Sagar, chairman, Federation of All RWAs. “The identity cards were not renewed despite our repeated efforts and thus everybody lost interest,” he added.

There were many who did not know about the community policing project at all. Sudhir Kapoor, secretary general, DLF City RWA, said the initiative was discussed during a forum when it had started but nobody informed us about the enrollment procedure. Therefore, we are clueless about it.

However, Gurgaon police commissioner S.S Deswal said, “We are in constant touch with the representatives and it has helped a lot in maintaining law and order in the city.”

However, former DLF Qutub RWA president R.S. Rathee said no meeting was held by any police official including the commissioner himself.