News
Bolder crime puts gun in every cop’s hand by law
With criminals getting bolder and violent crimes on the increase and with police themselves coming under attack, the police department this week made it mandatory for all personnel to carry a pistol while on duty.
The decision was announced after it was found that 27 police officers had been injured over the past two months while attempting to stop criminals from escaping.
Among these is a traffic policeman who was shot at while on a motorcycle chase after a gang making a getaway in a van after robbing a shop in Negombo last month, and another unarmed policemen who was stabbed while chasing a robber in the Colonne area.
A senior police officer who wished to remain anonymous said that while there was statistically a decline in crimes recorded, the robberies carried out in the past few months were more daring.
Police statistics show a decline in the crime rate in 2013 compared with 2012, with 584 homicides reported last year as compared to 641 in 2012 and robberies and thefts reported in 2013 showing a decline to around 4,700 from over 6,500 recorded the previous year.
“We have seen an increase in the number of banks, pawning centres and shops being robbed, and many are taking place in broad daylight. This shows that criminals are getting bolder,” the officer said.
Harsha Wijewardhena
To arrest the disturbing trend, more police personnel in mufti have been deployed in most major towns, he said.
A recent tragedy that occurred when a robbery attempt went wrong resulting in a 19-year-old youth being shot dead highlights how innocents are paying a heavy price due to the increase in crime.
Nipuna Anuraga, an Advanced Level student of Gnanodhaya Vidyalaya in Walpola, had attempted to give chase to a robber who had attacked his mother, who was manning a kiosk being at the front of their home.
The boy had heard his mother scream and on seeing the gun-wielding robber and had come running to help.
The robber had turned on him, opening fire. Nipuna sustained serious injuries to his chest and died after admission to hospital.
Another robber, one of a five-member gang, had then gone to the home of a rice mill owner in Udugampola, Gampaha and stabbed him in the stomach and got away with a gold chain weighing two-and-a-half sovereigns. The victim is still in hospital.
Gampaha Police OIC Bandara Ratnayaka said two police teams had been dispatched to track down the gang but there has been no breakthrough yet in their investigations.
Police recently put in place an Automated Fingerprint Identification method to assist in tackling crimes more effectively and early indications are that it could be of immense assistance, not only to identify criminals quickly but also expedite cases in court against them.
The 900 young men and women who gathered at Police Headquarters in Colombo last week for interviews to be recruited to the police service were among the first to be subjected to fingerprinting as part of the recruitment procedure.
The interviewees’ prints were matched against more than 370,000 fingerprints in the newly-created fingerprint bank of convicted criminals.
The test proved useful as it was found that two of the interviewees had been involved in criminal activities and hence were not qualified to join the police service.
Similarly, last Thursday, Pettah police carried out a night operation taking into custody 92 persons who were found loitering in the area. Once at the police station they were all fingerprinted and their prints fed into a computer system. In less than an hour it was found that 30 of those in custody were persons convicted for drug-related offences or IRCs – Island Reconvicted Criminals.
The system enables police to make background checks within minutes on suspects in custody.
The system was ceremonially opened by the Secretary, Ministry of Defence and Urban Development Gotabaya Rajapaksa at the Deyata Kirula exhibition in February 2014 and connects 403 police stations throughout the country through a high-speed broadband internet and IP/VPN connection provided by Sri Lankan Telecom (SLT).
The Automated Finger Print Identification System to track criminals efficiently was developed by the University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) Software Development Unit.
Harsha Wijayawardhana, who heads the unit, said the locally-developed software enabled police to match new prints against those in the database in a maximum time of three minutes. Previously it took at least 14 days to obtain such records.
“We studied the systems developed in several countries and developed our own system. It is possible to get a 100 per cent match using this system,” he said.
Mr. Wijayawardhana said the development of the system had cost around Rs. 1.5 million. If the technology had been obtained from abroad, it would have cost around Rs. 800 million. Such systems were in operation only in two other Asian nations, Japan and India, he added.