Pakistan police pop their rollerblades on to catch Karachi's criminals

[MenInG]

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Police in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, are deploying an armed rollerblading unit to curb theft and harassment on its teeming streets.

Gliding in a circle with their weapons pointed inwards, and lifting and lowering the guns in unison, the 20-member unit clad in black undergoes rigorous training.

“We felt we needed to come up with an innovative approach to control street crime,” said Farrukh Ali, chief of the unit, explaining that officers on rollerblades could more easily chase thieves on motorcycles through the city of 20 million.




Ali conceded that rollerblading police could not be deployed across many parts of Karachi due to the poor road conditions and uneven footpaths, but said they would be sent to public places with a higher incidence of theft and harassment.

“This is just the beginning,” said Aneela Aslam, a policewoman on the unit. “This rollerblading will really benefit us. With this training, we can reach narrow alleys very quickly where it is usually difficult to go.”

Safety concerns were raised when initial footage of the Karachi unit’s training showed officers carrying heavier weapons, but Ali said the unit would only carry handguns, reducing the risk of bullets richocheting.

The rollerblading police - who follow in the footsteps of similar units in Europe and elsewhere - are expected to begin officially next month, but they were recently spotted outside the venue of the Pakistan Super League cricket tournament.

And they have already begun patrolling Karachi’s bustling beachfront.

“Seeing them here in clean uniforms since the morning gives us a sense of security, as even in daytime, snatchings occur here,” said pedestrian Muhammad Azeem.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-p...-idUSKBN2AN022

[Bigboii]

They should have followed the dolphin police method (if its still working under PTI punajb goverment)

I dont think any criminal would take tham seriously with rollerblades on...

[Gharib Aadmi]

They should have followed the dolphin police method (if its still working under PTI punajb goverment)

I dont think any criminal would take tham seriously with rollerblades on...

The rollerblades would do nothing, however that gun that khatoon is holding will get attention from the criminals. Probably should have more than 20 cops though.

[Giannis]

What's next, Jet Packs?

[the Great Khan]

i hate to say this but this looks like a publicity stunt from the zardari party..if they can go and beat the hell out of the leader of opposition in Sind then I doubt rollerbladed police are going to do anything against petty theft..I hope Im wrong and I hope this initiative is successful but the biggest problem in Sind is the Zardari peoples party. Get rid of them and you are on the way at least.

[classic]

I can see a lot of ankle injuries coming to these cops.

[finalfantasy7]

I swear whats going on in pakistan, who funded this:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...onse-unit.html

like this will work, thr just going to roll over on thr ankles.

Karachi just gets worse and worse

[marlonbrowndo]

Surely we can’t let this slide

[Zeshan547]

I swear whats going on in pakistan, who funded this:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...onse-unit.html

like this will work, thr just going to roll over on thr ankles.

Karachi just gets worse and worse

If you can't really be first world country second best is to pretend hardest. That's all what it is, 3rd class gimmicks.

[SpiritOf1903]

Came on Jimmy Fallon!

[angrypathan]

Until the criminals just find and climb the nearest staircase

[WhenSultansBowled]

Oh boy! This will be fun.

[MenInG]

In a first, Karachi Police will now be patrolling the streets of Saddar on bicycles, while a portable toilet has also been introduced to facilitate traffic cops.

Shedding light on the initiative, Deputy Inspector-General (DIG) Traffic Iqbal Dara said that the "bicycle squad" has been introduced in Saddar to solve the problem of frequent traffic jams that occur almost every day due to narrow lanes.

On Friday, Dara inspected and inaugurated both the facilities at the Metropole Traffic Checkpoint in Saddar.

The DIG Traffic said that in an area like Saddar — which is one of the busiest areas of Karachi — it is hard for traffic police officers to reach a spot if traffic jams occur there because the streets are very narrow.

"In the first phase of the initiative, five bicycles have been introduced in the area, while cars and heavy motorbikes will also continue to function in the area," Dara said.

Portable toilets

Dara said that he issued the directives to start a portable toilet service for traffic police personnel because they face a lot of difficulties finding toilets due to the nature of their job.

The DIG Traffic said that after standing on the roads for several hours, traffic police personnel have to face severe troubles finding toilets during their duty hours.

"To resolve the issue, we have decided to introduce a mobile toilet on an experimental basis," Dara said.

He said that the portable toilet would move from one location to another across the city to facilitate traffic police personnel.

"The wheeled toilet will stop at particular traffic checkpoints for the traffic police on duty to use, stay there for some time, and then move to another location," Dara explained.

He added that traffic police would also be able to call for a mobile toilet whenever the need arises.

https://www.geo.tv/latest/348112-kar...ds-on-bicycles

[OMB]

Oh boy! This will be fun.

Looks like power rangers in black

[MenInG]

KARACHI, Pakistan — Syeda Aiman has learned to shoot while she skates. She isn’t a hockey player, but an officer on a counterterrorism unit in Pakistan.

The 20-member unit carries out counterterrorism surveillance and community policing on in-line skates. It also has an equal number of male and female officers. Both facts are rarities in this city of at least 15 million, where the roads are crumbling and nearly every institution is male-dominated.

Police officials say the unit, which first appeared in public in December, is a success. Critics call it a gimmick. But most Karachiites can at least agree that it’s been odd to see armed officers skating through their shopping malls.

“It’s a new concept for the public,” Ms. Aiman, 25, said. “When we started skating we were excited, but also nervous about falling. But the fear goes away when you’re in the field.”

To some degree, the unit is a response to a public relations crisis. Police departments in Pakistan are among the country’s “most widely feared, complained against and least trusted government institutions,” the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said in a 2016 report. Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, rose to power in 2018 in part by promising police reform.

This month, nine police officers were suspended in the eastern city of Lahore after they jailed employees of a restaurant that had refused to give them free burgers. Many people saw that incident as a sign that police corruption was still rampant.

Fear and mistrust of the police run high in Karachi, where several officers have been charged with killing civilians in staged shootouts. In one high-profile example, a police inquiry found two years ago that Karachi officers had killed an aspiring model and three others, then falsely claimed that the victims were militants. The commander in charge of the operation, Rao Anwar, is now on trial for murder.

Maqsood Ahmed, a deputy inspector general with the regional Sindh Police, said the new in-line skating unit was designed in part to address criticism that Karachi police officers didn’t know how to interact with civilians. The sight of officers on skates, he added, has helped to “lighten the mood” in malls and other family-friendly places where they patrol.

“People should feel that they are our friends and that they are there to protect us,” he said.

But the skating unit isn’t just out to make friends.

Mr. Ahmed said its primary responsibility was counterterrorism surveillance in public areas, including parks and cricket stadiums. He said the in-line commandos had already made arrests, improved the force’s response rate at crime scenes and protected several high-profile officials, including Mr. Khan and President Arif Alvi.

Ms. Aiman, who joined the Sindh Police two years ago, said she had a deep commitment to the counterterrorism wing that her in-line skating unit belongs to. As a girl, she paid close attention to the Pakistani military’s crackdown on insurgents in mountainous tribal areas, and she used to volunteer at a Karachi arms fair.

“I believe that terrorists deserve to die,” she said over breakfast at her apartment. “You have to kill them. They don’t deserve to be alive.”

Cities in Britain, France, the Netherlands and elsewhere have started skating police units over the years, with mixed results. Mudassir Ali, a Sindh Special Security Unit police commando who has trained officers for the skating unit, said that he modeled it on examples from abroad.

Mr. Ali said those on skates typically worked in tandem with officers in patrol cars and that they had been trained to jump and climb stairs in “areas that don’t have the best roads or infrastructure.”

Even though the commandos mostly help to maintain public order in places like malls and popular street food areas, he added, they are armed and ready to shoot criminals if necessary.

“We can even hold onto a car at 120 kilometers per hour,” or 75 miles per hour, he said.

Not everyone is impressed.

Jasim Rizvi, a resident of Karachi’s middle-class Gulshan-e-Iqbal neighborhood, said he saw the unit as a publicity stunt.

“Maybe the police had nothing to do so they decided to hop on skates,” said Mr. Rizvi, who was recently mugged outside his home. “I only see the police in action when they’re accompanying so-called V.V.I.P.s.”

Putting officers on skates to improve the police force’s relationship with the community could potentially make sense in Karachi, but not if they are armed, said Zoha Waseem, a research fellow at the Institute for Global City Policing at University College London.

There is little evidence from other cities that in-line skating units help police forces fight crime, she added. Also, Karachi is full of potholes.

“This is why it’s hard to see this initiative as something more than police propaganda,” she said. “We don’t know how sustainable it will be, and I wonder if this budget could have better been spent elsewhere.”

Mr. Ahmed said the unit had another purpose beyond community engagement and crime fighting: empowering women. Many of its 10 female officers are from impoverished rural areas of Sindh Province, he added, and the unit is a “merit-based” outfit created in part to combat entrenched sexism.

“We say that there should be equality between men and women at workplaces, but this is not always possible due to cultural issues,” he said.

Women walking alone in Pakistan draw stares, or worse; sexual harassment is common in workplaces and beyond; and the country has one of the highest gender pay gaps in the world. Mr. Khan, the prime minister, drew a backlash in April for saying that rape cases had risen because of how women dressed.

Ms. Aiman, who grew up in Karachi, said that as she trained for the in-line skating unit, she learned strategies for projecting authority and avoiding situations in which people could try to take advantage of her because of her gender.

“The way people look at men and women is different, especially female police officers, and especially female officers on in-line skates,” she said.

In-line skating is trendy in a few of Karachi’s middle-class neighborhoods, but Ms. Aiman did not know what it was until a police colleague explained the activity to her last year.

Her relatives were skeptical about it, she said, and she sustained minor injuries during training sessions. But after about two weeks, she was weaving through crowds at cricket stadiums and other public places, with a watchful eye on crowds and a holstered handgun on her belt.

“Our training is quite good,” she said. “When we skate, we’re in control and we keep a strong grip on our weapons.”

Now her friends want to take skating lessons, too, and her parents and siblings are coming around to the idea of having an in-line skating officer in the family. The other day they were surprised — and impressed — to see her climb a staircase with her skates on.

“They made me do it again, just to make sure,” Ms. Aiman said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/w...ng-police.html

[MenInG]

Seems lots of gimmicks but no real effort

Tonight I got robbed and beaten in my car, at Korangi Karachi.

While my wife and kids were with me.

Had to pay 1500 rupees bribe to just submit a complaint letter to Police at Zaman Town Police Station.

And I'm a registered tax payer at FBR.@DMCSindhPolice @sindhpolicedmc8

— Fishel BenKhald (@Jew_Pakistani) July 30, 2021

[WhenSultansBowled]

Seems lots of gimmicks but no real effort

Tonight I got robbed and beaten in my car, at Korangi Karachi.

While my wife and kids were with me.

Had to pay 1500 rupees bribe to just submit a complaint letter to Police at Zaman Town Police Station.

And I'm a registered tax payer at FBR.@DMCSindhPolice @sindhpolicedmc8

— Fishel BenKhald (@Jew_Pakistani) July 30, 2021

Even seeing my bleeding face. Torn lip and gash wound on my head.

The police asked for 2000 rupees bribe to accept my complaint letter.

Now going to the hospital to stop the bleeding.

— Fishel BenKhald (@Jew_Pakistani) July 30, 2021

This is outrageous.

[SpiritOf1903]

A guy who's a pro Israel Pakistani looking to degrade the nation whenever he can. Sounds legit

[MenInG]

A guy who's a pro Israel Pakistani looking to degrade the nation whenever he can. Sounds legit

Not sure if you are saying that the word Jew in his handle somehow makes what he is saying wrong?

[MenInG]

KARACHI:

South Investigation Police have arrested an Afghan national allegedly involved in stealing valuables from vehicles.

The police arrested Abdullah after he was identified with the help of CCTV footage. Police claim he was part of a larger gang of illegal Afghan immigrants.

As per the CCTV footage, the suspect and his two accomplices came out of a vehicle walked up to a car parked car near Sultan Masjid in DHA Phase-V, broke its side glass and stole a laptop as well as cash. Police said they received a tip-off that Abdullah was lurking around Moin Khan Cricket Academy looking for a vehicle to target.

A squad raided the spot and arrested the suspect, while his friends fled from the spot. Police claimed to have recovered laptop, cash, a ladies bag, and make-up items from Abdullah's vehicle.

An Afghan identification card was also found from the arrested accused. Fugitive accomplices Latif and Javed are also Afghans. The goods recovered from the car of Abdullah were from vehicles at different places of Defence Housing Authority.

[WhenSultansBowled]

KARACHI:

South Investigation Police have arrested an Afghan national allegedly involved in stealing valuables from vehicles.

The police arrested Abdullah after he was identified with the help of CCTV footage. Police claim he was part of a larger gang of illegal Afghan immigrants.

As per the CCTV footage, the suspect and his two accomplices came out of a vehicle walked up to a car parked car near Sultan Masjid in DHA Phase-V, broke its side glass and stole a laptop as well as cash. Police said they received a tip-off that Abdullah was lurking around Moin Khan Cricket Academy looking for a vehicle to target.

A squad raided the spot and arrested the suspect, while his friends fled from the spot. Police claimed to have recovered laptop, cash, a ladies bag, and make-up items from Abdullah's vehicle.

An Afghan identification card was also found from the arrested accused. Fugitive accomplices Latif and Javed are also Afghans. The goods recovered from the car of Abdullah were from vehicles at different places of Defence Housing Authority.

Darn. I hope they at least hid laptop and didn't leave it in 'in the open'.

Remember kids, never ever leave your valuables in a parked car. You are literally requesting criminals to break your glass.

[SpiritOf1903]

Not sure if you are saying that the word Jew in his handle somehow makes what he is saying wrong?

Not at all he's a proud Zionist

[MenInG]

Authorities in the federal capital decided on Sunday that all the under-trial prisoners (UTPs) whose charge sheets are yet to be submitted will be presented before the court via video link from Adiala Jail as the lock-up at F-8 has run out of space.

The office of the inspector general of police (IGP) in Islamabad said that the decision to opt for an electronic criminal justice system was taken as the present judicial lock-up (Bakhshi Khana) established within the F-8 court’s premises was initially built to hold 250 UTPs.

The decision to present UTPs via video link has also exposed the lack of space and facilities for the prisoners at the federal capital’s district courts, which have long been neglected and appear more like a local market than court premises.

With the passage of time, the office said, the number of UTPs increased manifold due to variations in the demographics and needs of the criminal justice system in Islamabad. Resultantly, the present lock-up has “become insufficient for keeping the large number UTPs”.

In addition, it said, due to the weather conditions, there are unhealthy conditions within the lock-up, and UTPs protest for a spacious place as well as facilities i.e. fans, water facility, latrine, etc. Also, it added, there is always the possibility of UTPs escaping during transportation, and at times there are quarrels among the UTPs and others.

In order to resolve the issues, the police said, both the district & session judges of East & West Atta Rabbani and Kamran Basharat Mufti, respectively, were requested to convene a meeting of the District Coordination Committee to take up the issues.

Last week, both the district judges convened a meeting where senior civil judges, capital’s DIG Operation Sohail Zafar Chatha, SSP Operations Muhammad Jamil, SSP Investigation Farhat Abbas Kazmi, DSP Legal, District Prosecutor Naseem Zia, Deputy Commissioner Irfan Nazir, assistant commissioner of Saddar, and superintendent of prison police of Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi, participated and took some decisions to overcome the issue at hand.

The meeting decided that the UTPs whose challans are yet to be submitted may be brought/presented before the court through a video link from the central jail for attendance through the e-court service to save themselves from difficulties at the Bakhshi Khana. They also figured that this will also save fuel otherwise used for transportation.

The decision, they said, will also save the deployment of police for this task and avoid risks of any eventuality during transportation of a large number of UTPs. However, the rest of UTPs whose cases are fixed for evidence will be brought regularly so that their trial could continue without further delay.

SSP logistics and SSP operations were also directed to do the needful regarding the production of UTPs whose cases are fixed for evidence well in time before the court so that their cases can be finalised without any delay.

In the meeting, the senior superintendent of prison suggested a proposal of establishing 4/4 booths for UTPs for appearance through video link for East & West divisions and stated that he has established four booths for each division which are ready to be used, and the remaining will be established within a few days.

With the establishment of the said booths, he said, UTPs’ production will be digitally recorded, and they will be saved from the problems at existing lock-ups, which cannot cater to a large number of UTPs.

The SSP investigations was also directed to ensure the submission of charge sheets of the UTPs without causing further delay within the stipulated period of 14 to 17 days under Section 173 of the Criminal Procedure Code.