Police’s poor policing and increase in street crime

Islamabad : According to secret data compiled by the police for the personal consumption, even though many back a range of much tougher anti-crime measures, including severe punishments, the top policemen still believe that governments can do little to make an impact on the figures.

The incidents of mobile snatching at gunpoint and bike lifting are at their height in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi but both fences are treated as ordinary subjects by the police and avoid lodging criminal cases against the organised gangs of mobile snatching and bike lifting, statistics disclosed.

People engaged in the investigation of such crimes admitted when asked that the police have failed to counter the offences of mobile snatching and bike lifting. “The ratio of both the offences is boosting day-by-day because of the negligence and inattentive attitude of the police,” the officer spoke out, adding, “Keeping in view of the crime data of the reported crimes, more or less 75 mobile phones are snatched and 55 motorcycles are lifted from the different areas of the twin-cities daily.”

The gangs are directly linked with the Afghan-based criminals’ mafias, an investigation officer dealing with the street crimes, said but on the condition of keeping his identity secret, adding that the gangs comprise young criminals in their twenties who are tasked by the ringleaders with the allocation of their specified areas. “Most of the criminals belong to Afghanistan, Northern Areas, Khyber Pakhtunkwa, and areas located near Pak-Afghan borders and controlled and guided from Afghanistan,” the officer disclosed.

“The easiest crime to commit for the muggers is mobile snatching which is unmanageable for the police because of two basic reasons, first is that the gangsters are more experienced and nippy that the police cannot get them in extremely limited resources and secondly, the police have no counter strategy to control the deteriorating situation of law and order,” the officer maintained.

“We haven’t seen a huge increase across the board,” said a top lawyer High Court, a recent victim of the muggers, who was recently deprived of his mobile phones when two bike riding muggers blatantly held him at gunpoint snatched his cell phones and forty thousand rupees in cash and disappeared from the scene. It happened in a few seconds, not minutes, he maintained.

Property crimes are the most difficult to solve, Naveed Anjum, a local criminal lawyer, said, adding that often there are no witnesses, and thieves take care not to leave clues when breaking into vehicles. He noted that many property crimes are reported as multiple incidents. When somebody breaks into a car and steals under, this is counted as two incidents, breaking and entering a motor vehicle and petit larceny. The same principle applies to burglary, he maintained.

The most populated parts of the twin cities showed higher rates of crime, the officer said, noting Aabpara, Shalimar, Rural areas, Golra and Tarnol in Islamabad and Sadiqabad, Airport, Morgah, Nasirabad, Westridge and Rawat had the higher rates.