I am sitting here and wondering about what this weekend is going to look like when taking into account the number of weapons stolen from a police armoury at Good Hope Police Station. This is the first weekend since the weapons were stolen and the criminals are going to make sure that they use them as soon as it is possible.
Let me begin by congratulating the two police officers who were accosted by four men who were apparently armed with knives and axes. Had they tried to put up any resistance, they would have been critically injured or we could be reporting fatalities.
The police were not armed and those who are blaming them or their superiors are doing so because of their ignorance about the crisis that we have in this country regarding security issues especially with policing matters. Let me declare that we have a crisis in this country and what happened was bound to happen. There was very little the police could do anyway.
A similar case had happened in South Africa weeks earlier where a police station was stormed by armed men. This was not happening for the first time in that country. Two years ago criminals stormed a Kwa Zulu-Natal police station and killed five police officers on duty and made away with all weapons in their armoury. So it is not necessarily the numbers that would prevent such crimes, rather it is strategies.
We should never deceive ourselves as a nation and expect our police to perform like those in Britain. The similarities with both institutions are that they go about unarmed. But in the case of a London policeman as compared to Good Hope, all of them are immediately armed with teasers and a canisters of pepper spray. This forms their first line of defence in a situation where they are confronted with danger or in a case where a suspect is resisting lawful arrest.
For our police officers, their first line of defence is a baton or best still is to take flight on your two legs. In this case the two police officers were women and naturally they were not going to outrun their challengers who were men. But seriously speaking one cannot foil a knife attack with a baton; that is outdated.
The public may have a field day criticising the police for not arming themselves with the items I have just mentioned but it is not as easy as it may sound. The police act does not have provisions for the use of such items as part of the policing resources. The law has to change first before these things can be brought in place to be used by police officers.
The Good Hope incident should serve as a wake-up call not only to police officials or government; this should ring a bell to the public. Members of the public have surely seen the perpetrators before the crime occurred and they should have alerted the police. Our people must know that the police exist to provide us security and they must be partakers in this whole exercise. Intelligence information should be provided at every level.
From this point going forward, there is a requirement for a paradigm shift that over arches all sectors of society. To begin with, the public should increase their participation in cooperating with not only the police by all other law enforcement agencies. There is also need for the police leadership to accept change at all levels.
Change in this case regards the uplifting and provision of resources to the police. From this moment going forward, Botswana Police Service must become more proactive rather than reactive to issues such as the Good Hope robbery. That has come and gone and the crime speaks volumes as it challenges police officials to conduct a serious organizational need assessment.
This assessment will need to address issues of the increase of personnel and more advanced equipment. These gargets will have to address the personal safety of the police officer and further to that; there is need to revamp all our country’s police stations’ technology. Every police station must have CCTV cameras that are connected to a central control room in the district and that can be linked up by satellite. At each district HQ, a rapid reaction force should be provided and that should include a helicopter and a fixed wing aircraft.
These changes require mind set change for them to be achieved. For the level of our economy, all these things are affordable even though they may sound expensive. As a country, we will have to do cuts elsewhere in order to achieve these changes.
For all these changes intended at improving the security of the people in this country, they will need to be followed up by strategic planning by the leadership of the police organization. Part of the planning should involve the evolution of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
It is up to the police bosses to plan but execution at a strategic level lies with the government of the day. The public would like to see signs of political will in these challenging times. Unless those who have political power get to see what the rest of us are seeing, it will be all in vain for police leadership to attempt to improve anything.
Currently the police are too few to provide basic policing duties and beside that they are seriously demoralised. The rate at which crime is growing has superseded the rate at which our police are capable of doing. Beside the growth of crime, Botswana has one of the worst police/population ration in the world. The recent national census must equally inform the planning in the area of security and particularly with policing. Government must be told again that they are the ones breeding crime by not seriously tackling the issues of unemployment. Something needs to change. But at the end of all that I have said, the crime at Good Hope points to an insurgency. This is a warning to all of us.
