Peace ushered in:

Setting up a new police division and stations in the North and East:

Upholding law and order

by Kurulu Koojana Kariyakarawana

Creating a people-friendly police

After sweeping the most destructive force of terrorism, the LTTE from the face of the island nation the most crucial challenge was to establish peace and restore law and order. This was not an easy task at all as battle -torn Sri Lanka had suffered gruesome wounds of crime and injustice for three whole decades.

Although terrorism was eliminated measures to bring normalcy back to civil society was vast as the focus of law enforcement authorities was on the violence unleashed by the terrorists across the country, as a result much attention could not be placed on law breakers.

When it comes to law and order, the leading law enforcement agency that renders its service to safeguard the law is the Sri Lanka Police Department. The Department is bound to sustain peace and normalcy in civil society and bring criminals to book.

The first move made by the Police was to set up a new police division and stations in the North and East which had been under the control of the LTTE for many years. Seven police divisions had been established in the Northern Province under a Senior Deputy Inspector General who overlooked the entire province and three DIGs in charge of Jaffna, Vavuniya and Mannar ranges.

The seven police divisions Jaffna, Kankasanthurai (KKS), Mankulam, Kilinochchi, Mulaithivu, Mannar and Vavuniya are supervised by seven Senior Superintendents of Police (SSP).

Apart from Vavuniya and Jaffna the rest of the divisions were newly placed and the stations under them were set up after May 2009. In the five new police divisions about 20 new police stations had been established and 11 police posts were set up in the recent past. Then top most officer in charge of the province Senior DIG Pujith Jayasundera told the *Sunday Observer *that a strength of 7000 policemen currently serve in the province attached to number of units including civil affairs, crime detection, traffic administration, women's and children's bureau and intelligence.

What is significant about the Northern Province compared to the other eight provinces is that the percentage of reporting crime was low and the crime solving percentage was very high. This too is only due to theft and robbery which could be considered as the most gravest crime being reported along with a considerable amount of domestic violence cases reported to the Police Women's and Children's Bureau.

There are hardly any grave crimes reported such as murder, assault, rape, abduction or arson in the peninsula since 2009. Although the entire peninsula was liberated since 1995 terror was still continuing with a series of assassinations carried out by the LTTE pistol gang. This came to a halt with the liberation of the entire Northern Province and the joint operation launched by the military and the police in Jaffna.

Acting Police Spokesman ASP Ruwan Gunasekara told the Sunday Observer that apart from setting up new police divisions in the previously rebel controlled areas new divisions had been introduced such as Police Archaeology Protection Division, Environmental Protection Division and Unitto Receive Complaints against Religious Activities. These new divisions were established in order to meet the ever growing demands of civil society.

To uplift the quality of the service the department was given many facilities like 100 new buildings to replace the old police stations countrywide. Senior officials and other main units were given ew vehicles and motorcycles to conduct their duties efficiently. Special training programs were given to selected skilled officers both in locally and internationally.

Making another significant change the entire department was introduced to a VPN system a few weeks ago that would undoubtedly enhance its operations in future law maintaining. VPN, which is the acronym for Virtual Private Network,is a system which could extend a private network across a public network, such as the Internet. It enables a computer to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if it is directly connected to the private network, while benefiting from the functionality, security and management policies of the private network.

In other words by adopting a VPN system the department could transfer all its operations which had been limited to 'old fashioned' paper work and manual handling into an integrated IT base system. Until last week the communication between a regular police station and the police headquarters was limited to using facsimile or telephone messages.

But with the activation of the new system it gives the opportunity to communicate through emails and video confer among the senior officials.

Most importantly this will link every police station in the country into one main system where the Officer in Charge of particular station gets the ability to contact Inspector General of Police on a video call at any moment through a private login only granted to the former.

All these facilities including the latest technology had helped to enhance the quality of service that resulted in solving major crimes in the recent past.

The solving of two abduction dramas where two innocent children were abducted by gangs demanding ransom gave the country an assurance that the Police Department is doing its role in saving civilian lives from unlawful elements. And the efforts being taken by the department to create a people-friendly police in the country is another move made to uplift public relations.