Special lecture on “Community Policing in Vancouver”

Chandigarh: The Centre for Police Administration, Panjab University, Chandigarh organized a special lecture on “Community Policing in Vancouver”(Canada) by Partap Sahota, Executive Director Collingwood Community Policing Centre, Vancouver (Canada) and was presided by Prof. Ramanjit Johal, Former, Chairperson Department of Public Administration, Former Dean International & Former Director Research Promotion Cell, Panjab University, Chandigarh.

Prof. Anil Monga, Chairperson, Centre for Police Administration while welcoming the guests highlighted that law enforcement agencies these days are facing serious challenges. Criminalisation of politics, growing nexus between power structure and criminals and inefficient state machinery has made the task of maintaining public order and crime prevention difficult. Police agencies have been devising various mechanisms to face these emerging challenges. Community policing has emerged as an important one such mechanism.

Partap Sahota, speaker of the day shared his valueable experiences about the working of Collingwood Community Policing Centre Vancouver. He said that Collingwood Community centre is a Non-governmental Organisation promoted by the city and is being run by the members of the community. According to him, Community Policing is more about community than Policing. The problems of the community are identified by the members of the community and are solved on priority basis. There is a team of 150 volunteers from all over the world at the centre, who are acting as eyes and ears of the police department. The volunteers are assigned community patrol duties along with Police officers on regular basis and are playing a very significant role in acting as a bridge between police and community. He shared that such a model will be quite useful for the city like Chandigarh.

Prof Ramanjit Johal said that the model of Community Policing being practiced at Collingwood community policing centre is one of the best practices of an ideal community policing model in the world.  Today is an era of participatory governance, networked governance with different agencies, public private partnership, government and community partnership and community policing practiced at Vancouver is a mix of all of these.  She appreciated the volunteer program being run by the centre, which is a very well organised program and is playing very important role in training them and helping them in their careers. It is heartening to note that the centre has helped more than 100 volunteers who have become police officers and are serving in different capacities in the police force. 

The lecture was attended by faculty members, research scholars and students from centre for police administration.