Big plans for a younger, better police force

COVER STORY

By DYLAN MURRAY
THE ROYAL Papua New Guinea Constabulary has a large budget for the year 2024, and Police Minister Peter Tsiamalili Jnr has big plans for how some of the budget will be used.
They were allocated about K600 million for this year. And although that is a significant increase on the amount they got last year, the police do need this.
Wearing the cap of the Minister for Internal Security for some time, Tsiamalili made it clear that his primary focus was to bolster numbers in the RPNGC.
We witnessed the first national police recruitment in a long time last year that saw young men and women numbering in the tens of thousands applying to join the force.
In the end, the force could only accept less than 600 new recruits.
But the Police Minister said that they would be trying to make the recruitment a regularly occurring process, and that this would be done not only to build the force but also to help curb unemployment and the number of school dropouts.
And one of the needs they have to fill before they can build numbers is upgrading the buildings and infrastructure they currently have, which include stations, barracks, learning facilities at the college and so on.

New colleges, stations and housing
In the second quarter of last year, one of a number of plans the RPNGC was chasing down was expanding the Police College and having campuses in other parts of the country.
Deputy Police Commissioner Admin Joanne Clarkson had said they had made some headway in identifying possible locations for campuses.
Whether they have purchased said land is not clear yet, but we are all hopeful that their plans succeed.
Clarkson had said the more campuses they had, the more recruits they could take, but that that also depended on the number of training officers they had on staff.
The Government has allocated K11.7 million from its K2.16 billion budget for the Law and Justice Sector, for recruitment and training for both Police and Correctional Services this year.
One of the benefits of having other campuses outside of the capital is that recruits would be sent out there during a part of their training akin to an on-the-job stint.
It is public opinion that policing out in some rural and urban areas is not as effective, and the number of officers available plays a big part in the success of policing.
This raised the concern of housing as well, and having stations in areas where there were none.
The concern being enabling officers to have a place to stay and a place to work as a means of motivating them to do their job wherever they are stationed.
The RPNGC has been working with developing partners to try to meet all those needs but it does not happen overnight.
But I digress. What we are hoping for is that policing becomes effective and our officers are properly trained.

New equipment, new approach
Towards the end of 2023, police operations during the festive season were mostly quiet.
New Year Operations in the capital kicked off nicely with a motorcade as a show of presence and strength, and despite videos shared online with captions about how the police were allegedly out on the roads to harass citizens, a lot of people came out to see the motorcade and wave at the police men and women who drove by. It was a sight to behold; cars lined up single file, sirens blared and communities lined up beside the road to see them.
But less than two weeks later, a payroll system glitch would have the force on strike and citizens on the street rioting and looting shops.
As to whatever was behind this is still under investigation, we can only speculate. But this was an eye-opener for members of the constabulary and the Minister for Police himself.
Tsiamalili said the police’s capacity for quick response is an area that needed improvement.
He said the quick action would be needed next time to calm similar unrests.
He added that the police would be expanding efforts to deal with looters and rioters with greater force in the future. He said this included introducing bean-bag rounds and rubber bullets, which, to a civilian, meant people may be shot at in the future but with non-lethal rounds. Bean-bag rounds and rubber bullet have been used in many other countries, especially by riot squads.
Whether the RPNGC has a formal Riot Squad unit, I cannot say.
But with the introduction of the above equipment, our police force may well be on its way to establishing one which might be for the better.
Jan 10 was a very dark day, and repeating something like that in the future may mean ruin for the citizens who do not take part in the looting and have to suffer through the closing of shops that would likely follow.
Among the equipment that the Police Minister had mentioned they were looking to get were armoured water canon trucks. These are also used by riot squads in other countries for crowd control.
He expressed the need for these assets especially in NCD for situations such as the events of Jan 10, but the hope is that these can be provided for our other towns and cities as well.
He also noted that there would be a different approach to domestic terrorists.
Speaking about the Kumul 23 unit that is being sent up to Enga, he said this unit would be the one to confront, and if required to, kill rapists and murderers and other criminals identified as domestic terrorists.
This goes to show the severity of the crime situation in some parts of our country and the mindsets that enable these to continue.
While we applaud the efforts by church organisations trying to broker peace between warring tribes in the Highlands, or youth groups attempting to have criminals surrender their homemade weapons in other parts of the country, the RPNGC may be forced to do their jobs by whatever means necessary as a last resort.

Changes
Police Commissioner David Manning’s executive team has been big on reforms and making sure officers who are of or past retirement age are properly retired and thanked for their years of service. While the public has its own perception of which officers need to go, Manning has assured the people time and again that they are also taking measures to weed out corrupt cops and make room for new officers.
He and his executives have retired more officers in their short term than their predecessors.
Minister Tsiamalili says he is confident in Manning’s leadership in the reform agenda he is spearheading in the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary.
“The Commissioner has been understandably harsh on police who do not make the grade, and has sacked more incompetent and corrupt police officers than any of his predecessors,” said Tsiamalili.
“He is building the force with the brightest of our new generation.”
He encouraged the RPNGC executives to “keep cracking the whip” and to “get rid of the dead wood”.
“We have more recruits coming in through the system and the useless or bad police that are terminated are nothing short of a burden on the force so we are better off without them.”
He said this was important for demonstrating transparency in the force.