I had my first real brush with police station management when we did our 24 hours police station module recently. We got shifts to perform in different functions as SHO, station writer, investigators etc. Despite the rigour of round-the-clock duty schedules which makes one question the rational basis for expecting a policeman to be a superhuman, it was the plethora of procedural requirements that disturbed me the most. I know that we always associate a policeman with a weapon or a lathi but the real paraphernalia of any cop is the pen. The case which we had to solve was of the simplest nature yet the paper work took us hours and hours together. Sitting on the chair, even in that simulated environment, we impulsively felt why so many cases get thrown out at the very first step by the policemen - because each case, no matter how trivial it is, adds to a huge amount of unreasonable paperwork. Most of the procedures are important but the level of redundancy is appalling, to say the least. Also, because of the fact that the procedural requirements do not conform to the particular nature of a case, a lot of time,money and material resources get unnecessarily wasted.
Another important need of the hour is that of making cases of simple nature compoundable. The Indian society is such that very often the cases which are of antagonistic nature are "settled" by the two parties among themselves in a technically illegal compromise. However, the police, once it has registered the case, becomes legally bound to take it to the logical conclusion. In such scenarios, the police end up facing hostile witnesses (because after the compromise, they don't want anything to do with the police affair), procedurally stubborn judges and pointless fatigue of their own men. Allowing compoundability of certain offences like shoplifting (as is there in many developed countries), simple hurt, certain mild degrees of criminal intimidation, etc. can go a long way in bridging the disconnect between the reality and the theory.
Diary maintenance is another very crucial aspect of police station management. When we were explained the concept in classes and taught the need for it - it seemed perfect and much-needed. However, when we saw how many steps are needed in every single case and how they have to be managed by a small group of men (5 in rural and utmost 20 in urban), it seemed humanly impossible to be able to maintain diaries as they are supposed to be maintained - real-time and up-to-date each second. All this would be fine if this would just be a method of control for the senior officers. However, relatively small lapses in diary entry are often viewed by courts as serious (given the high-headedness of the legal sanction that goes behind it, and not on logic) and can turn the case in favour of a criminal.
Most importantly, these actual bridges between procedural requirements and ground-level needs give the policemen at the Police Station level the
excuses to ignore the procedure. This makes it much more difficult for senior police officers (where we will enter as IPS) to check the
police excesses that go under the garb of "incompatibility of procedures with field requirements". That's why the role of IPS officers as SPs of Districts becomes crucial - as it carries that element of discretion in each step. The SP should be careful as to not be blinded by the procedures alone so as to penalise well-meaning actions by subordinates but at the same time he/she should be shrewd enough to notice and bring out any procedural lapse that might have resulted into foulplay and police excess.
