NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police claim to be ‘With You, For You, Always’, though city residents often have experiences to the contrary. Now, their own internal survey has belied Delhi Police’s claims of swift response to people’s call for assistance.
The survey, carried out in the last week of January to check the response and reaction time of PCRs and various police stations, revealed how contemptuously policemen in the capital deal with people who make distress calls or require any help.
Interestingly, the survey was conducted after an officer of the rank of Special Commissioner made a PCR call and got an awful response.
A total of 20 test calls were made by policemen up to the rank of inspector to the police control room. In several cases, the police personnel who attended the calls, which were redirected to the PCR and the police stations concerned, were rude or apathetic. In most cases, the response time was much more than 10 minutes that the Delhi Police claim they take.
In some cases, it took the policemen more than half-an-hour to reach the spot, including those of IP Estate police station, which has the police headquarters in its jurisdiction, though the call was made from ITO.
One policeman made a test call at Red Fort police station informing that a thief had been caught. Instead of sending men to the spot to arrest the ‘thief’, the police station in-charge told him to bring the thief there. The duty officer of Lal Quila Chowki asked, "‘Aapne call ki hai, kya hua? Kahan par pakad rakha hai? Isse lekar chowki mein aao’. (You made a call, what happened? Where did you catch hold of him? Bring him to the police station).”
The survey report accessed by The Sunday Standard mentioned that in some cases, policemen even misbehaved with the callers. In one case, the caller was told, “Aap PCR van ke pass aa jao, pairon mein mehndi lagi hai kya? (Come near the PCR van. Have you applied henna to your feet?)”
Policemen who took the calls sometimes asked questions to harass the callers. However, no action has been taken against any policeman, sources said.
In one case, despite a test call being made from hardly 500 meters away from the police commissioner’s office, the police took 33 minutes to reach the spot and told the caller, “Why are you standing here? Do you have the bill of your mobile phone? Don’t you know this area is prone to snatchings?,” a policeman from IP Estate said.
As per the report, some of the worst reactions times were from Karawal Nagar, IP Estate and Prashant Vihar police station staff. It says even in cases where it’s necessary for police station in-charge to attend the calls, only two SHOs did do.