BENGALURU: New City Police Commissioner Kamal Pant has taken over at a time when Unlock-3 has started and Sunday and night curfew have been lifted. Over 1,200 City police personnel have been infected by Covid-19 and there is a sense of fatigue in the police personnel, who have been on frontline Covid duties since March.
In his first interview soon after he took over as the City top cop, Pant said with the lockdown easing, the “biggest challenge is to work out a balance between deploying police personnel for Covid management duties and handling the day-to-day police functions.” “With the easing of lockdown, life will slowly return to normal and normal policing will have to start to address crime and law and order situations.
We will have to review deployment protocols as per the requirement,” he added. Pant said that some of the core police functions like issuing of summons or serving warrants will have to be done online to ease the pressure on the police. “We may also deploy Home Guards to assist the police,” he said.
The unprecedented and long-drawn call for Covid duty and fear of contracting the virus has had a toll on the mental health of the police personnel, who are also facing lot of pressure and anxiety from their families. “The morale of the police has to be kept high for them to perform well. We need to address their fears and issues. There are challenges ahead but we will find solutions,” added Pant.