Policing During A Pandemic

New protocols must be evolved to meet law and order challenges that are coming up during the COVID-19 crisis while keeping the police force safe and active.

- Somesh Goyal

The news of the death of three New York cops due to COVID-19 and infection of another 700 did not draw the required attention in the face of the larger human catastrophe of the century facing mankind. But these deaths should worry the men in khaki and policymakers in India. The pictures of cops physically pushing thousands of migrant workers to contain their movement with the aim of containing the virus, unmindful of their own personal safety or fear of contamination or transmission of the virus, should set the police leaders, administrators and policymakers thinking. Most of the policemen have the protection of only a mask and a ‘lathi’.

Even though they were unprepared, the police were quick to respond to the call of an unprecedented lockdown to support the implementation of the nationwide public health advisory. No police force in the country can claim to have anticipated such an affliction impacting the entire population in one or the other way. The frontline staff took to the job without having been provided masks, sanitisers, etc., and awareness about the pandemic. There was no time available to strategise and secure logistics before mobilisation. Like the medical and paramedical staff, the police also took on the challenge first and then started preparing with the limited resources available to them. Paramilitary forces are better placed as they do not come in to direct contact with the public like the civil police. Paramilitaries generally have better resources and availability of doctors and the paramedical staff in the units are helpful as well. Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) is successfully operating the largest isolation camp in its Chhawla campus in Delhi. However, despite the lack of such resources, it is quite creditable that the police forces in India, as a whole, have risen to the occasion at great personal peril.