COMMUNITY POLICING AS A PANACEA FOR INSECURITY, ARMED BANDITRY, KIDNAPPING, DRUGS ABUSE AND YOUTHS RESTIVENESS

A LECTURE PAPER DELIVERED BY THE PCRC OGUN STATE CHAIRMAN HIGH CHIEF (DR.) SAMSON KUNLE POPOOLA JP ON WEDNESDAY 1ST MARCH, 2022 AT LOKOJA, KOGI STATE ON COMMUNITY POLICING AS A PANACEA FOR INSECURITY, ARMED BANDITRY, KIDNAPPING, DRUGS ABUSE AND YOUTHS RESTIVENESS FOR THE NATIONAL PCRC CAPACITY BUILDING WORKSHOP FOR KOGI STATE 

PROTOCOLS

Since its formal formation on the 8th of May 1984 by the then Inspector General of Police, Etim Iyang and the launching of Community Policing by President Olusegun Obasanjo, Gcfr on the 27th, April, 2004, the PCRC have gone through so many transformations and expansions to suit the whims and caprices of Police makers at the helm of affairs both in the Police hierarchy and the PCRC leadership all over the country.

One of its core mandate as stipulated in its constitution Article 5:9 is to actively participate in all Nigeria Police programs that have direct bearing to Community Policing and shall render all assistance in the overall interest of safety and security of lives and properties.

Article 5:10 (6.0) – To constantly liaise with stakeholders (i.e Federal Ministry of Police Affairs, Police Service Commission etc.) for general direct guidance and assistance in order to provide quality service of a safe neighborhood.

The two mandates above therefore place the PCRC at the fore front of effective community policing which has been defined in several ways as.

Means of effective way  to promote public safety and to enhance the quality of life in a community

Means of bringing police and citizens together to prevent crime and solve neighborhood problems.

A way and means of stopping crime before it happens, not responding to calls for service after the crime occurs

A means of giving citizens more control over the quality of life in their community.

Means police become part of the neighborhood so as to help the police get a better sense of residents’ needs and help residents to develop greater trust in the police.

Making the public a critical member of Police Department.

“Those who believe that community policing is practiced in their neighborhood are more likely to express favorable opinions of the Police” (Weitzer & Tuch, 2006, P.45)

“Together in partnership, the community and police formations work together to achieve a common goal of a safer, better place to live. It is democracy in action (BJA, Aug 1984 p.4).

No matter the way you look at it or how you describe it, the PCRC is poised to play a pivotal role in the ongoing search for an effective community policing as both in organization and reach, the PCRC remains the organization to beat in achieving the set objectives of community policing in the country.

EMPOWERING PCRC TO DELIVER ON ITS CORE OBJECTIVES

As Weitzer clearly stated or impugned, the core mandate of the PCRC as enunciated in its constitution has the primary objective of community policing, intelligence gathering and critical support for the officers and men of the Nigeria Police in terms of welfare and logistics.

Community policing is seen as an effective way to promote public safety and to enhance the quality of life in a community.

Community Policing therefore plays a pivotal role in the two defining elements of policing.

Police Community Relations

Problem solving in Partnership

An effective community policing will alter the way police are organized to accomplish their goals, it will also broaden police organizational goals. Active participation is required from all and sundry including community leaders, local governments, state and federal government in order for community policing to work.

Everyone is responsible for safeguarding the welfare of the neighborhood. Beyond the traditional policing methods, the goals of policing are expanded and hence the perception of the community is changed. 

The End – SARS protests is a pointer to the loss of confidence in the traditional policing system which the PCRC can stop in the gap to accomplish through effective community policing strategy and active participation.

The loss of confidence is due to:

Traditional policing assures that the problems of society are not within the realm of the police formations or department.

Traditional police department are strictly reactive and don’t look beyond efficiency resolving the immediate incident at hand. (i.e. apprehend the criminal, prosecute without looking back as to how such crime can be prevented in future in the particular community, hence they are ready to take on case after case of some incidence from same community without tackling the root causes.)

Traditional police officers are tied up to the dispatcher and ready to do no more than answer to one distress call after another.

However, the PCRC as an organization can stand in the gap for effective community policing by:

Changing the structure of policing and its management.

Building up and strengthening the community.

Linking up the Police with the community.

Build a synergy that helps to unravel causes of crime in the society.

Taking over some responsibility off the police so that more resources can be made available for crime fighting.

Building a bridge of familiarization and interaction for the police in the communities thereby making access to information and intelligence a lot easier.

Evaluation of community security needs and making same available to the Police.

It is without gain saying that there cannot be an effective Police – Community relations without active community policing and community involvement in strategy, planning and execution. The Police must be willing as it has shown in the formation of the PCRC to work actively with the community through its agency the PCRC. The community involvement in its pursuits to control crime must be stepped up and more confidence must be built around problem solving in order to lessen the commission of crime and societal disorder by diligently examining concerns in the society.

PREPARING THE PCRC FOR COMMUNITY POLICING 

One of the advantages of community policing is the ability to reduce fear of crime in the community, an increase in Police presence in the neighborhood will lead to more stability and confidence in the system. Hence, the PCRC having played these traditional roles in the past 36 years is in the best position to champion the objectives and goals of community policing.

While the various committees set up by the IGP for community policing implementation is laudable, the eventual actualization of the policies is going on without the active participation of the various committees who are already poised and expectant for the task.

It must be stated clearly here that the various community policing committees at all levels must be adequately empowered and supported to discharge these roles, it is a pity that non empowerment of the committees hindered them in discharging their first outing during the End – SARS protest. However the PCRC stopped   in gap for the various committees and helped to douse palpable tensions in many communities. This is highly commendable.

In its 35 years of existence, the Pcrc has built such a huge followership and public acceptance as the face of community involvement in policing, this goodwill needed to be tapped into in our drive towards a sound community policing model.

In this instance the PCRC needs to do the following:

Rebrand and remodel itself to be more acceptable as a face of the community in problem solving.

Purge itself of the toga of its creation by being more independent in its intervention process and be more proactive in dealing with public complaints.

Spearhead the proactive problem solving machinery by identifying and resolving issues before it snowballed into crisis.

Engage the community more and strive to remove all barriers of suspicion in the mind of the public.

The PCRC must as a matter of urgency do a lot of house cleaning and streamline its membership admission process to ensure the best hands are recruited into its fold.

The elitist toga of some commands membership must be expanded to accommodate all shades of opinion and strata of the society.

Engage the Police hierarchy to show more commitments in partnering with the PCRC rather than seeing them as tools of emergency problem solving rather than a long term strategic partner in modern policing.

As the philosophy of policing moves from a traditional to a community oriented approach, performance from the perspective of the PCRC must shift from the arrest and crime rates found in traditional policing, the PCRC must champion performance based on affection of quality of lives of the community and how many crime problems are solved rather than how many arrests have been made.

The PCRC must engage the youths and women to feel good about the Police, to let both of them know the importance and indispensability of the police to the overall good of the society. The police must be made to be forthcoming in helping rather than enforcement role, giving direction to the stranded, assistance in traffic difficulties, alternative domestic dispute resolution and humanity in policing and decorum in execution.

The PCRC must sell community policing to the public as a philosophy rather than be a programme and it must be treated as a process and not an event.

PCRC INVOLVEMENT IN ELEMENTS OF COMMUNITY POLICING

ELEMENT 1. QUALITY SERVICE DELIVERY

The PCRC today is seen and accepted as partners of the Police and hence should play a pivotal role in stemming the police towards quality service delivery to the public, it’s no gainsaying that the several years of neglect and underfunding has left the force dejected and frustrated and sometimes this frustration is taken out on the members of the public thereby widening the gulf of mistrust and animosity.

The PCRC must be seen as the vanguard of repairing the damaged bridge and this can be done by attracting more public support to the police in advocacy and robust public relations. Rather than using our vantage position to further oppress the public, we must act more as a mediator and advocate of superb quality service delivery.

ELEMENT 2. PARTNERSHIP

The members of the PCRC must be ready more than ever before to partner with the Police and by extension cementing more partnership between the Police and the larger community.

It has become an undeniable fact that the Police has come to the realization of their inability to effectively police the people outside of the public and even as policing is becoming more complex by the day, the need to build more bridges and strengthening existing ones has become inevitable.

While the Police needs the public to succeed, the public also needs the police to maintain public order and community safety hence the need for partnership.

ELEMENT 3. PROBLEM SOLVING

Both the Police and the general public must see crime as a problem rather than an act. While a problem requires solution, an act requires reprimand or punishment. The danger of treating crime as an act is the fact that perpetrators will be punished but the crime will still persist but once it is seen as a problem a solution once found the crime will disappear.

Hence the pcrc must work out a model of community engagement to work out solutions for communal problems, remove opportunity for crime commission and eliminate the fear of crime in the society.

ELEMENT 4…..EMPOWERMENT

A critical part of service delivery of any organization will depend largely on the resources available to the personnel in effective discharge of its duties. Hence the PCRC must set as its objective the attraction of empowerment opportunities for the police. Our police must be moved out of its archaic method of force and brute for more intelligence driven policing, proactive and crime prevention rather than crime fighting.

Modern gadgets will eliminate frictions, evidence planting, torture etc for a more technologically driven investigation and diligent prosecution.

Pcrc must seek and attract multinationals, state and local government to invest more in security because at the end of the day it reduces cost of governance and stimulate the economy.

ELEMENT 5……ACCOUNTABILITY

The PCRC must be willing to hold the Police accountable to the public. An organization funded by the taxpayers must be made subservient to the public without losing an iota of its dignity.

The police itself must reengineer its internal evaluation and accountability unit to ensure that officers and men are made to be promptly accountable for their actions and inactions.

The provost unit must be more accessible for updates on reported cases of misdemeanor and infractions. As we move the police from a force to a more civil apparatus, the Pcrc must make focus and accountability its watchword.

A FRAMEWORK FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND PARTICIPATION

The community development process is most commonly referred to where community participation is a significant component of projects. Hence, it is useful to present a framework for community development that illustrates the ‘ideal’ circumstances for community participation. 

The first five elements of this framework are more related to the process, and the latter two elements are more related to the outcomes. These ‘ideal’ elements can be contrasted with the challenges or barriers to participation experienced in the ‘real’ world. The five process elements of community development are: 

• Control of decision making by community members who participate to control the identification of issues and the project interventions. 

• Involvement in action by the community to change the issue. 

• Development of a community culture by the project that contributes to community members taking responsibility for improving their area and services. 

• Organisational development that occurs where the project builds a new organisation or improves an existing one. • Learning which occurs when the participants acquire new skills and information. 

The two elements that relate more to the outcomes of a project are: 

• A concrete benefit results through the achievement of a new or improved service or facility

• New power relationships result in the community, that are more equitable.

BARRIERS AND POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS TO COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION

There are many factors that reduce the likelihood of community members becoming actively involved in prevention activities like road safety. Ten barriers in particular appear consistently as impediments to community participation. These barriers are grouped into two broad categories of personnel and planning issues: 

• Personnel Issues

—A reduction in social capital 

—Lack of time of community members 

—Lack of leadership 

—Lack of relevant skills and knowledge of community members 

• Planning Issues

—Adherence to one approach or process 

—Top down or bottom up planning 

—Inappropriate program focus 

—Inappropriate program evaluation 

—Lack of funds and resources 

—Lack of sustainability

Personnel Issues

A Reduction in Social Capital - There has been a worldwide trend in developed countries towards increasingly individualistic societies. The resulting reduction in community involvement, or social capital, may be attributable to several reasons. These include the dominance of economic rationalism; a perception of increased competition and therefore increased emphasis to look after one’s self and family as a priority to the exclusion of others; the increased proportion of family members in the workforce; longer work hours; the growth of population in cities and the related loss of social cohesion along with increasing distrust and isolation. 

So, while there is a call to encourage increased community participation in health there has been a trend for the community to become less involved. The concept of social capital has become a focus of research in an attempt to identify reasons why community involvement is declining and to help identify ways to reverse this decline. It is particularly relevant in respect to the emphasis of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion on community action and empowerment. However, work is still required to develop valid and reliable ways to measure social capital. 

There is no simple solution to reversing the reduction in social capital and its effect on community participation in road safety initiatives. It has been argued that social capital is accumulated through a time-consuming, primarily local process. Therefore, programs to enhance social capital and restore a sense of community must have a long-term outlook. Social capital can be strengthened by activities that build cooperation and trust, and which involve community members working together on common goals for the improvement of their community. 

In the case of CPIPP (Child Pedestrian Injury Prevention Project), the project generated substantial cooperation between the researchers, the participating schools and community agencies as well as local community members. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the project was regarded positively by these groups who were brought together to work on a common goal for the good of their community. 

Lack of Time of Community Members - Many community projects fail or are not sustained due to time constraints of group members. Community members who become involved in community projects usually already have other significant commitments. It is not unusual to find the same small core group of people responsible for several initiatives in a community. 

Programs need to show regular tangible progress so that people feel their time is not being wasted. Funds need to be available, if possible, to pay for the employment of a project officer who can ensure that progress on a project will continue with minimal dependence on the time of voluntary group members. 

Lack of Leadership - Lack of interested, skilled and committed people in the area of community safety can be one of the main barriers to prevention interventions being developed and implemented in a community. Whilst it is possible for a project to be initiated by an outside facilitator, the development and ultimate sustainability usually is dependent on local leadership. 

Lack of Relevant Skills and Knowledge of Community Members - Many community projects falter because group members lack relevant knowledge and skills. Professional facilitators can help community members develop skills by working closely with them, and by conducting training. The latter needs to be geared to the education level of the community members and consideration must be given to appropriate venues, time and resources. This approach was used extensively as part of CPIPP.19 Teachers in participating schools, for example, were provided with a specially developed road safety syllabus along with in service training. In addition, a project officer assisted the Gosnells Road Safety Committee members in their development and implementation of road safety interventions in their community. Another approach used in the CPIPP to facilitate the skill development of community members who were involved in the road safety project, was the allocation of specific tasks to them. This seemed to also help strengthen their commitment to the project. 

Planning Issues

Adherence to One Approach or Process - Dogmatic support of a particular ‘process’ for establishing community participation in road safety projects or programs can be counterproductive. Proponents of a single approach who criticize alternative approaches can be very destructive and jeopardize cooperation. A good example of this problem is the debate surrounding the ‘healthy cities’ approach during the 1980’s. 

No one ‘model’ or approach is recommended as the only ‘process’ for establishing programs and enlisting community participation. Many variations exist for the implementation of such projects. Respect for a variety of approaches, and the adaptation of the most appropriate components is likely to yield the best results. A combination of approaches from recognized and proven planning processes was adopted for CPIPP. 

Top Down or Bottom Up Planning - Some proponents of initiatives that have a significant community participation component maintain that bottom up planning (i.e., ‘community development’) is essential. They advocate for a community development approach at the program initiation stage. That is, they believe that the community members should identify their own health needs and priorities, and develop the interventions. This process may include very minimal involvement of health and other professionals, and is intended to empower the community members. Major problems associated with this approach include being very time consuming especially if the community members lack skills in the planning process and lack knowledge about road safety. This is especially a problem when there is limited time available for the program (e.g., funding may only be available for a one or two year period). 

At the other extreme there are proponents of a top down approach (i.e., ‘community organisation’). They advocate that professionals should develop and deliver the programs for the community. Involvement of untrained community members, they maintain, is inefficient and time wasting. 

Most programs lie between these extremes, with a community organisation process used initially, and with increased orientation towards a community development approach as the program proceeds. This ensures that sound planning has been undertaken initially by professionals who have the relevant training. It also allows involvement of community members early in the program, with increasing opportunity for participation as the program progresses. This approach, which was used for the CPIPP, enables community members to work along-side trained practitioners. The community members subsequently develop skills and competencies relevant to such programs and hence become empowered to continue the program themselves. This is an example of ‘capacity building’ which is increasingly espoused as an important role of health promotion.

Inappropriate Program Focus - Priority problems may not be selected for intervention because some members of the community perceive something else is more important, e.g., believing marijuana related traffic crashes rather than alcohol related crashes are a greater problem. This can lead to resources being directed to a problem that has relatively limited impact in the community. Alternatively, too many priorities may be selected, resulting in a lack of focus for the program, or ongoing commitment. Difficulties can also occur if a community member persists in advocating priority for an issue that she or he alone has a vested interest in. 

Inappropriate Program Evaluation - Inappropriate evaluation is a common criticism of many intervention programs that rely on community participation. This problem can be exacerbated where failure to develop clear objectives increases the difficulty in establishing an appropriate evaluation plan. Inadequate evaluation can affect the accountability for resources devoted to the initiative and hence it’s later sustainability. 

Evaluation needs to be developed as part of the initial road safety plan. Baseline data, which are essential for effective planning, also form the basis for the project evaluation. Partnerships between a community group and a tertiary institution can also be beneficial. An appropriate evaluation plan needs to be developed at the planning stage rather than towards the end of the program. The application of the principles of participatory research can ensure that the community representatives have an active role in the evaluation. Evaluation specialists from outside agencies such as tertiary institutions may be recruited to membership of the community group. It is desirable that these representatives on the community group are used mainly for carrying out the evaluation, and in an advisory capacity for other components of the program, rather than as dominant committee members. This can help ensure that the ownership of the program remains in the hands of the community members and does not become too dependent on external professionals. 

Lack of Funds and Resources - Projects must often rely on limited local finances and voluntary labour. The initial establishment of other projects is dependent on funds provided by Government agencies, research bodies and charitable foundations. But once these funds are exhausted, many seek further resources from benefactors / sponsors or by fundraising activities, drawing energy away from the task at hand. The likelihood of funds being provided by State and Federal government agencies to sustain community based road safety initiatives is improved if program effectiveness is proven. This is a good example that justifies the need for an appropriate evaluation plan. 

The CPIPP received its core funding from a health promotion research-funding agency, and additional funds were provided by State road safety and transport agencies over a three year period. 

Lack of Sustainability - Funding agencies have reflected concern about the lack of sustainability of programs. Some agencies often have the expectation that community groups will continue their activity after the funding has been used. 

The chances of a program being sustained are greater if many of the barriers, discussed previously, are removed. For example, programs are more likely to continue if funds are guaranteed for the initiative. Appropriate leadership along with support from committed and skilled community members are also essential ingredients for sustainability. These skills can be developed during the early stages of a project and are part of the empowerment and capacity building process that ultimately gives communities greater control over their health and safety.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, as members of Pcrc we must be at the forefront of the drive towards the success of an effective community policing as now been spearheaded by the federal government and the various state and local governments.

The success of the just concluded recruitment and training of the Police Special Constabularies and the active involvement of the Pcrc in the process is a pointer to the indispensability of the Pcrc in driving this new vehicle as well as striving to midwife it to success, if we abdicate this role now after 36years of going it alone is to allow the sweats of our forebears in the Pcrc to be in vain…God forbid.

I thank you all most heartily for your attention and as we depart back to our various formations, let us all carry along with us the new realization that effective community policing can only succeed if we as Pcrc members remain in the vanguard of building bridges between the Police and the public and continually standing in gap for them even as we continue to steer them towards better civility and greater respect for human and individual rights.

Ven. (Dr) Samson Kunle Popoola,

Chairman, PCRC Ogun State.

Secretary, Ogun State Community Policing Advisory Committee,

19th November, 2020.