THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The metamorphosis of the archetypical lathi-wielding cop to a savvy law enforcement officer will now be much faster. Getting a grasp of the new-era realities, the police department has upgraded all of its 10 armed police battalions into centres of excellence (CoE) in a bid to modernise the force.
The Special Armed Police camp has been upgraded as a centre of excellence in cyber crime, while the Kerala Armed Police (KAP) 1 battalion has been upgraded as CoE for investigating economic offences. The KAP II and III battalions have been deemed as CoE for crowd management while KAP IV will deal with investigation of bodily offences.
Another key change is the upgrading of KAP V, which will deal with high-altitude training. The Malappuram Special Police (MSP) will deal with special crimes while the Rapid Response and Rescue Forces (RRRF) will handle disaster management.
The Indian Reserve Battalion will specialise in the domain of VIP security and tactics. The women’s battalion will provide training in soft skills. The training of 340 master trainers is progressing in 10 centres and they will return to their parent battalions to work with the trainees.
Each battalion has 600 civil police officer-trainees. The system in the armed battalions is that 70% of them moves to local police stations after the completion of their training, while the rest remain with the armed battalion.
From among these, in each battalion, three to four master trainers will get advanced training in each domain. In effect, there will be 40 master trainers in each battalion at any given time.
“The police need to change according to the times. Since the civil police officers recruited to the force are trained in the battalions, they can get adequate training in all the domains from the master trainers. The change will be palpable among the cops within a year,” said a senior police officer.
The syllabus and methodology were developed by a team of officers led by IG Satheesh Bino and DIG S Harisankar. The training is based on the syllabus of leading enforcement agencies and organisations and has been customised for Kerala needs.
Metamorphosis
SAP — Cyber crimes
KAP 1 — Economic offences
KAP 2 — Crowd management (tactical)
KAP 3 — Crowd management (bandobust)
KAP 4 — Bodily offences
KAP 5 — High-altitude training
RRRF — Disaster management
MSP — Special crimes
IRBn — VIP security & tactics
KAWPBn — Soft skills