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Kathmandu Post - Kathmandu, Ne
29 December 2005

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Corruption in police

By NARAYAN MANANDHAR

Even if corruption is found everywhere, a clean-up campaign always has to start from some point or place. The situation is similar to cleaning of your house. You start cleaning from some point -- bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, drawing room etc -- possibly from the dirtiest place or a place highly visible to your visitors or guests. Anti-corruption strategies also web around this concept of house cleaning. Since you cannot clean all parts of the house in one go, you have to begin step by step, or in an incremental fashion. When one applies this concept to corruption problem of a country, one has to determine from where to start the clean-up campaign. Should it be started from the judiciary, politics, government service, police or army?
Usually cleaning up the police force is reckoned to be the starting point for anti-corruption campaigns. First, police are at the forefront of law enforcement. They are expected to uphold the law, protect and assist the community. Second, their actions are highly visible and have an enduring impact on building faith in the government. When law enforcement agencies are a law unto themselves; people lose faith in the system.

The efficiency attained by anti-corruption agency in Hong Kong, called ICAC, is due to their focused intervention, at first, in the corruption in the police force. The relative efficiency with which they were able to clean this stable helped them to drive out corruption from the country itself. Police force is depicted as the third most corrupt sector at the global level. The first two are political parties and parliamentarians. (Global Corruption Barometer 2005) The survey of 'Public Perception Corruption' (organized by Transparency International for south Asia in 2002) in Nepal also reckons police force to be the third most corrupt sector. The first two, according to it, are land administration and custom office. However, in terms of people's day-to-day experience, police force is the most corrupt sector followed by judiciary.

In July/August 2004, Commission for the Investigation for the Abuse of Authority (CIAA) filed cases against three former chiefs of the police on corruption charges. That was the first time high-level ex-police officers were charged of corruption. The mere implication of such high-level officers in corruption charges is, in itself, an indicator of pervasiveness of corruption in Nepal Police. Recently, it was uncovered how the dance restaurants were under the protection of police officers. The restaurants are not only under the protection of police, a large chunk of the customers are police personnel and government officials themselves. (www.-nepaleyes.com). In a survey on brothel activities in the valley, recently published by Nepal weekly, the army and the police are reported to be the main customers. Similarly, the weekly also published a story on corruption in the procurement process of supplies in the army and the police force. The story reported that a contractor for the supplies had to pay a commission ranging from 12 to 17 percent to the concerned officers. This scribe was informed how a mock competition for contracting out supplies is being organized in the districts. Corruption not just affects national treasury, it also affects the health and morale of the servicemen by way of poor quality of daily rations. What these facts indicate is that police corruption often turns into an organized crime or racketeering, which is really a hard nut to crack.

Hubert Williams, President of the Police Foundation, in Washington DC, gives four primary factors for breeding corruption in police force. They are: (1) deficiencies in recruitment, training and promotion; (2) lack of resources such as poor pay and equipment; (3) lack of accountability system within the departments, courts and the law; and (4) unique "police culture" that inhibits the development of professional police standards. The last factor needs some explanations here.

Let us borrow the words of Williams: "Every police officer knows that neither ordinary civilians nor the law will save him in the wee hours of the morning as shots crack out through the air; only a brother police officer will do that. He owes that brother officer his unquestioning allegiance and complicit silence; and within this code of silence is the inherent flaw of a police culture that sanctions its members' lawlessness, particularly when race, ethnicity or economic class motivates an officer's actions."

This is how corruption thrives in police. No police officer wants to betray his fellow officers even when he knows their wrongdoing. A complete sense of camaraderie prevails among the police force and that breeds the culture of silence. This is the most difficult aspect of fighting corruption in the police force.

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Article sourced from

Kathmandu Post - Kathmandu, Ne29 December 2005

Corruption in police

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Kathmandu Post - Kathmandu, Ne
29 December 2005