Sri Lanka has grappled with a law-and-order problem for decades. It stems from poor governance, politicisation and a culture of impunity which Sri Lanka has grown a notoriety for. There is much needed to be done to address the issue. The National People’s Power (NPP) Government, one year into office, has made some commendable progress in combatting organised crime, especially relating to narco traffickers and peddlers.

However, there remains serious issues about how law enforcement agencies respond to crime, and their behaviour in general.

Firstly, it is evident that the Police Department and the various State institutions involved with border control are significantly compromised by criminal elements. While many Police officers have been arrested or removed from duty for their involvement with crime groups, what has been seen thus far may well be the tip of the iceberg.  

Secondly, the public hears little to none about crime prevention, where good old legwork doing the beat, and intelligence prevents a crime from being committed. It stands to reason that the Police are more involved in crime-solving than crime prevention.

One example of this is that the Police failed to prevent the murder of a high-profile organised crime suspect who was in custody, and known to be under threat, from being shot dead within the Courts premises, while the victim was in the dock. Given the nature of the suspect and the risks to his person (which clearly triggered additional security for the victim), the Police should have anticipated an assassination attempt. The Police, including the Special Task Force close protection detail, who were in the vicinity of the Court Premises, failed to stop the assailant and his assistant from fleeing the scene of the crime. In many countries, there is a strong focus on Crime Prevention, in Sri Lanka such is mostly heard of in the maritime domain, where intelligence-led operations with the Navy and Coast Guard net drug shipments before they make landfall. However, the Police and the State, (despite some suspicion over decades) failed to realise or intercept domestic production operations for methamphetamine before they got off the ground.

Today, the Police seem to be more reactionary, and publicity driven than ever before. The higher the profile of the crime – the greater the number of Police teams, or ‘special Police’ teams which are said to be deployed to hunt the perpetrators. Increasingly, the names of a few high-level police officers, many of whom are in the ‘line of succession’ are also ‘released’ by the Police – adding a flavour of bravado to crime fighting that the public seem to lap up, as if they were reading a crime novel. However, the hype – post crime is short lived, within hours or days, the Police announce to the media that they have a prime suspect, often with a colourful nom de guerre, who is said to be in a foreign country controlling a network locally. Within days ‘suspects’ are found, their tools of the trade pitifully displayed to the public, sometimes at the cost of collecting meaningful evidence, and verbal confessions allegedly given to the Police – parroted to the press before even indictments are finalised. Next, detention orders are sought and the ‘suspects’ disappear for the news cycles and the public attention for 90 days, only to be replaced by tomorrow’s gun-toting gangsters and the parade which leads to their arrests, or deaths. The behaviour of Police officers when handling evidence is shocking, it is as if they have received little or no basic training in the scientific methodologies used in evidence mapping, collecting and preserving. One only has to look at a TV news bulletin to see Police officers mishandle evidence – such as firearms and empty bullet casings from crime scenes to realise that, any defence attorney worth his salt will discredit it in court due to failures in chain of custody.

The Police claim success by indicating the number of suspects they round up and remand, not by the number of successful prosecutions they pursue. It is evident that the Police action is dictated by the public outcry which follows some crimes, and or is influenced by political pressure, which is brought to bear on them, post incident. The Government should address such deviation from the accepted best practices of law enforcement, crime prevention and solving in real life, not as theatre. It has only been allowed to remain so because the polity wants the public to believe that ‘under their watch’ the job is being done. Drop the act, clean up the system and deliver law and order. There are plenty of crime dramas on demand on late night TV.