Nigerians Must Demand Proactive Crime Prevention Approach – HURIWA

Civil Rights group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) says Nigerians must demand more robust proactive crime prevention methodology from the policing institution’s hierarchy as the nation can no longer afford to be at ease with current high level insecurity forced on it by criminal gangs and elements.

It said such practical approach needs urgent institutionalisation to replace the time “discredited and widely unworkable crime fighting tactics that would wait for a henious crime to be committed before going after the suspected criminals.”

Speaking against the backdrop of Police ‘rescue’ of the kidnapped Auxiliary Bishop of Owerri Archdiocese, Reverend Doctor Moses Chikwe, HURIWA said though rescuing the Clergy unhurt was commendable, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) need to “fine-tune their operational strategies to bring them in tandem with the global best practices and to meet the policing thresholds of the twenty first century World.”

In a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, the organisation said; “The Nigeria Police Force should invest substantially in building up intelligence gathering capacities of their officers and operatives and must partner closely with citizens and community leaders to be able to work a symbiotic relationship that will enhance proactive approach to crime fighting and prevention.
“The State and Local Government Area Councils and institutions both public and private and individuals of substantial means, must collaborate actively to introduce technologies for crime prevention such as the Closed Circuits Televisions (CCTVs) and the deployment of drones.”

Similarly, the statement said; “The telecommunications networks need to collaborate with the law enforcement agencies to quickly enable the citizens to feed in useful information on movements of suspected persons in their communities in such a way that the identities of the callers cannot be traced to avoid retaliation from the suspected terrorists or kidnappers.”

HURIWA further said adopting practical approach to crime fighting and prevention is in line with global best practices because; “Experts and criminologists say that Proactive policing, as a strategic approach used by police agencies to prevent crime, is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States.

“It developed from a crisis in confidence in policing that began to emerge in the 1960s because of social unrest, rising crime rates, and growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of standard approaches to policing. In response, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, innovative police practices and policies that took a more proactive approach began to develop.

“This report uses the term “proactive policing” to refer to all policing strategies that have as one of their goals the prevention or reduction of crime and disorder and that are not reactive in terms of focusing primarily on uncovering ongoing crime or on investigating or responding to crimes once they have occurred.

“Specifically, the elements of proactivity include an emphasis on prevention, mobilizing resources based on police initiative, and targeting the broader underlying forces at work that may be driving crime and disorder.

“This contrasts with the standard model of policing, which involves an emphasis on reacting to particular crime events after they have occurred, mobilizing resources based on requests coming from outside the police organization, and focusing on the particulars of a given criminal incident.”

For HURIWA; “Proactive policing is distinguished from the everyday decisions of police officers to be proactive in specific situations and instead refers to a strategic decision by police agencies to use proactive police responses in a programmatic way to reduce crime. Today, proactive policing strategies are used widely in the United States. They are not isolated programs used by a select group of agencies but rather a set of ideas that have spread across the landscape of policing.”

In urging the Nigeria Police to embrace this tested “methodology”, the Right body also called for the “introduction of technologies to wage an all-out war against armed criminals and terrorists in Nigeria.”