EXCELLENCE IN BULLSHIT

 

by PAUL AMATIO

The newly opened Station of Bullshit at Waigani police station is a clear indication of the lack of vision, focus and foresight in policing techniques and methodologies as well as crime countering tactics making use of and utilising modern capabilities.

To me, this whole bullshit about a station of excellence is just that – BULLSHIT!.

There is no such thing in the RPNGC or any other police force in the world as a station of excellence. Is this a frigging school or what?

In my last post, I spoke about the need to increase, update, and improve our ICT capabilities across the board in the RPNGC. The talk of vehicle tracking, dashboard cameras, real time logging and other high sounding terms are all a part and parcel of something called electronic security systems. They do not contribute directly to effective policing. They only ensure that vehicles are used properly and to some extent deter abuse. And also remind the officers that their actions will be captured on camera.

What all this money should have been spent on should have on the Operations Control Center at Boroko police station. The Opscen is the nerve centre of policing in NCD and Central province as well as parts of Gulf province. This is the facility that should have been upgraded. If you’re going to install electronic security systems, then the obvious control point should be at Boroko. Why create another Opscen at Waigani?

Similarly there should have been an integration of the RPNGC’s core ICT systems. This includes fingerprint and facial recognition systems. It should also have included integration with the MVIL vehicle registry database to enable effective and efficient policing of traffic. This has happened in Australia for over 20 years now so if this is funded by Australia, why can’t they have this done here?

The detention of all suspects is at Boroko police station cells. That makes it the logical place for the fingerprinting and photographing of all persons who are arrested. This information can then be stored in digital format in a central database in PHQ and retrieved at any police station in PNG through internet connection on a windows based application. This will also ensure that the use of fake and multiple names by suspects is slowly eliminated altogether.

This was an initiative that now Chief Superintendent Joseph Tondop and I were in the process of initiating and implementing through PIP funding in 2012 when politics interfered. The funds were then abused and used for renovations to the buildings (of all things)! If this initiative had been taken up and followed through by Peter Guinness who replaced Tondop, we would by now have, at the very least, a database of all offenders maintained and stored at Boroko police station.

In my opinion, the so called station of excellence concept is a meaningless hoax that does not contribute to effective or efficient policing and is an abuse of funds that would have put to better use in developing policing capabilities in real areas of need.