‘Fascist’ If Force Is Used, ‘Weak’ If It Is Not: IGP Describes the Dilemma Facing Police
If police use force to maintain law and order, they are called fascist; if they do not use force, people consider the police weak — this is how Inspector General of Police (IGP) Md Ali Hossain Fakir described the force's dilemma. Presenting the current reality of the relationship between police and the public, he said a distance has grown between the police and the people over the past 17 years.
He made the remarks on Saturday while speaking to journalists after a gathering of eminent citizens on community policing in Khulna Division at the Boyra Police Lines in Khulna. His comments after the divisional gathering on community policing have sparked fresh discussion about the role of the police and public trust in the force.
The IGP said overcoming the distance that has developed between the police and the public over the past 17 years is now the big challenge. He also said drugs have been ‘established’ in society, and that the police are working to move beyond this situation.
The central message of his speech was that police face a two-way pressure while on duty in the field. If they act firmly to control a situation, criticism follows; if they act softly, the force is thought to be weak. It is within this reality that police members must carry out law-and-order duties every day, he suggested.
The IGP said a legal framework is being prepared, with the approval of the home and finance ministries, to make the law-enforcement agencies more effective. Once implemented, community policing will function as a regular branch of the police rather than as a detached activity.
He presented the move to give community policing an institutional shape as one of the ways to reduce the distance between the police and the public. Greater direct engagement with people at the local level would make crime prevention and information exchange easier, his remarks indicated.
On ongoing crime-control activities, the IGP said joint operations are under way across the country against teenage gangs, extortion and drugs. Identifying these three types of crime as major threats to the current law-and-order situation, he said coordinated drives to suppress them would continue.
He also spoke of an initiative to enact a new law against extortion. Under the proposed move, police could be empowered to file cases on their own initiative over extortion even without a complaint from the public. His remarks suggested the proposal takes into account the reality that victims often do not come forward to complain out of fear.
On drugs, the IGP's message was blunt: drugs have been established in society — meaning their spread is no longer a set of isolated incidents but has become a social reality. He said the police are working to overcome this state, though his words also conveyed that success would be difficult without public cooperation.
The gathering of eminent citizens in Khulna Division discussed the current state of community policing and its future direction. The theme of public engagement returned again and again in the IGP's speech, making clear that restoring people's trust in the police is now the force's foremost task.
His ‘fascist’ versus ‘weak’ comment on the use of force reflects the ongoing public debate over how policing should be done. On one side is criticism of the force's harshness; on the other, public demand for firm action against crime — and balancing these two opposite expectations has become difficult for the police, his remarks suggested.
Attention will now be on when the draft legal framework and the proposed new law take final shape, and when community policing begins working as a regular branch of the police. The results of the ongoing joint operations against teenage gangs, extortion and drugs will also serve as a measure of the situation.
