Editorial
Safety in civic life on decline
Law enforcers need to pull up their socks
ON Wednesday a number of mugging incidents occurred in and around the city clearly indicating a spate in crime. These cannot be dismissed as petty offences which is how these are categorised in common parlance. Actually, they are pretty serious, often, life-threatening offences seeing the manner in which these were carried out and their fallout.
What is most brazen-faced about the occurrences is that these are happening in broad daylight and therefore in open defiance of law enforcing authorities. In one incident, the muggers sprayed bullets and exploded bombs to make their get-away with a loot of 30 lakh Taka as the view of the targeted grocery was blocked off by a standing cargo van. Three persons with bullet wounds landed in a hospital. In another occurrence, a house was robbed of the inmates' jewelry including cash, this too in broad daylight. In other separate incidents bus passengers were drugged to fainting and fleeced. Recently there has been a rise in the incidence of snatching and people walking through alleys and passing by desolate corners at night with fear for their life and limbs.
These days the criminals are mostly armed, apt to apply ingenious techniques and blast their way out to safety. The ever newer pastures the criminals are moving on to and their swelling numbers and accessibility to weapons would have to be closely studied, monitored and counter-measures strategised and taken. This is what an appropriate response mechanism should be like: update the lists of criminals, redraw crime zones according to new experiences, arrange frequent patrolling of police; in one word, make the police more visible in the inner city areas, more mobile and equipped. It is common knowledge that the police force is thinly deployed against anti-crime activities as a large chunk of them is devoted to VIP duties and maintaining law and order in a broader sense. Thus there is need for community policing coupled with greater induction of Ansar and VDP as the police : citizen ratio is improved backed by appropriate police reform.
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