The Police Service recently gained much notoriety with some of its officers detected being hand in glove with drug kingpins, so much so that Public Security Minister Tiran Alles threatened to check the bank accounts of certain high-ranking Police officers to ascertain the truth. This was after four members of the Police Narcotics Bureau were taken into custody for allegedly having dealings with top drug lords. Be that as it may, now comes the shocking revelation that our men in khaki are not only involved in the drugs racket but themselves have become drug addicts, the admission coming from the Police Spokesperson SSP Nihal Thalduwa himself.
According to him, intelligence officers have been deployed on the orders of the IGP to identify and arrest Police officers who are addicted to dangerous drugs such as Ice and heroin. Speaking to an English daily he also said that the IGP has alerted all senior Police officers to pay attention to men under them who are suspected to be using drugs in Police stations.”Recently we noticed an increase in the number of drug-related cases connected to Police officers in the Department. “As a law enforcement authority, the Department has a huge responsibility to maintain the rule of law in the country. But if there are persons who break the law within the Police itself how can we ask the public to follow the laws”? He queried.
The Police Department also says that officers who are caught taking drugs like cannabis (gamma) will be given a transfer in the first instance they are identified, while officers who are found to be using heroin or crystal methamphetamine (Ice) will be arrested and dismissed from the Police service after being produced before Courts.
One certainly fails to understand the reasoning behind this statement. On what basis is the law going to be applied between taking ganja and Ice? What guarantee is there that a Police officer who is addicted to ganja after getting transfer orders as punishment will kick the habit or will not graduate to Ice in due course? Besides, isn’t an ordinary person who gets caught with ganja not dealt with under the law and thrown behind bars? Why only a Police officer found taking ganja is not dealt with equally under the law instead of only getting transferred to another station where in all probability he will continue with the habit and even graduate to something worse? How will the Police ask the public to follow the law when double standards are being practised in this fashion- one law for the ordinary folk and another for the Police? No. A Police officer found addicted to ganja should be dismissed from service as in the case of an officer addicted to the more dangerous Ice. There cannot be a basis for differentiating between the two offences. Like SSP Thalduwa said in so many words, the Police ought to set an example in this respect and bring its own house into order first before asking the public to follow the law.
The revelation that most cops are into drugs also is a grave threat to the whole law and order edifice. This is because here we have the guardians of the law acting in breach of the law. Will this not embolden drug dealers to carry on with their business unhindered well knowing that those entrusted with apprehending them and bringing them before the law are one of their kind and there was nothing to fear whatsoever? The revelation also explains certain incidents of Police brutality reported recently such as custodial deaths of detainees at the Police stations. The media also reported the other day how a Police officer dragged a female along the Colombo Negombo road near Wattala while assaulting her unmercifully while she bled. These certainly cannot be acts of Police officers who are in their right frame of mind but a display of symptoms associated with heavy doping. The IGP should take a more serious view of this situation instead of only getting intelligence officers to detect Police officers taking drugs. Minister Alles too should get into the act and clean the Augean stables.
We have been repeatedly saying in these columns that during the war years recruitment was dome to the Police and indeed the other armed services dispensing with the laid down criteria such as checking on the backgrounds of the candidates and similar screening, due to the manpower shortage and also the exigencies of service. As a result undesirables, misfits and those with a criminal bent found their way into the Police service. The Police as a whole may well be reaping the consequences of such an exercise. Hence, a thorough reform of the Police Service is called for beginning with the identification of all the bad eggs and seeing the last of them. The service should also undergo reform in other ways such as being geared to combat the new wave of crime that in the present days has assumed a whole new dimension with the drug element coming into the equation.
In fact, the Police should be made to assume the role of a combat force to confront the new challenge. Not only that, all good officers should be identified and duly rewarded and given the necessary incentives to tackle big-time crime. Above all politics should have no place in the Police Force.
