Opinion: 'City police is top heavy, field staff not enough', writes Walter I Davaram

When I was CoP, I was in the rank of DIG and I had five deputy commissioners under me and I was reporting to the one and only Inspector General of Police for the state. Of the five deputy commissioners, two were for law and order and one each for crime, traffic and head-quarters (office work). 

But look at the numbers at the top today. Today’s Commissioner is also DGP and he has six additional commissioners (in the rank of IG), nine joint commissioners (in the rank of DIG) and 26 deputy commissioners under him. So the number of senior officials has gone from six to 42 in the last 30 years. 

It was easier to control with those numbers then because traffic and crime were not as challenging to deal with as now. Mainly the type of policing has been the same. But because of the expansion, the number of senior officers has increased. But a corresponding increase has not happened in the ground force. 

The field staff are the constables, head constables, sub-inspectors  and inspectors. 

Generally, there should be a recruitment policy like every year you should add numbers at the bottom. You should take into account retirements and special needs and prepare for the expansion. But what happens is that often the higher officers don’t periodically take stock and add up the numbers by reporting that to the Commissioner of Police. Nowadays, they don’t recruit every year and they take the increased workload with the same numbers. 

In short, the strength of city police is not enough. The old formula, which must be the same even now, is one sub-inspector should have 50 policemen under him and this number should be almost double big police stations such as Mylapore. But if you look at the numbers across the board many of them may be manning with fewer numbers. There is no constraint in recruiting the police staff. When I was Commissioner of Police, we needed women staff and so we recruited 60 policewomen in one go. It depends on requirement and special recruitments are also possible.