A community policing experiment involving police officers posing as residents in a crime-ridden community in the deep South has proved to be a success.
‘‘ Police are people and people are police. POL COL THINNAKORNRANGMART A CSD SUPERINTENDENT
Four officers took part in the exercise, modelled on an American community policing programme, in a Satun neighbourhood.
The locals had no idea their community was being used as part of the experiment.
Police say the exercise showed that unity and understanding can beat staggering odds to create harmony, even amid the formidable hostility in the South.
The concept was for communities to ''look inward'' for answers to their own weaknesses, Pol Col Thinnakorn Rangmart, a superintendent of the Crime Suppression Division (CSD), said.
The concept was introduced last year in the small, predominantly-Muslim village of Hua Thang, in tambon Phiman of Satun's Muang district.
Pol Col Thinnakorn said the village was carefully chosen for the pilot project. Early last year, four plainclothes police officers from the CSD were sent to live with villagers to learn about their problems.
The officers initially did not identify themselves as police. They rented a house in the community and blended in with the locals.
After three months, the officers made it known they were officers who were there to help solve problems that held back the community's development.
In an ice-breaking gesture, they befriended the locals through Hua Thang's village head and the imam prayer leaders who they met early in their stay at the community.
As the officers came to know the residents better, they learned that drug use and motorcycle racing by raucous youngsters were the most pressing problems in the community.
Youths were taking and peddling drugs while their peers raced motorcycles at night causing a constant racket and nuisance to residents.
As drug dealing spread in the community, crimes such as shoplifting became rife.
Pol Col Thinnakorn said the problems had persisted chiefly because the residents felt it was ''every man for himself''.
The community was not united so there was no collective impetus to stop the problems.
The residents also did not trust the local police, the superintendent said.
Pol Col Thinnakorn said the CSD was counting on the community policing concept succeeding where rigid law enforcement had failed.
He said it was essential that locals be made aware that they are good people who can settle their own problems without relying on a swift application of the law, which only sows seeds of mistrust towards law enforcement authorities.
Pol Col Thinnakorn said the four officers gradually won over the residents after they attended daily prayers at local mosques and participated in community activities.
''We believe if police and law-abiding residents band together, we can overcome a lot of the crimes out there,'' he said.
Pol Col Thinnakorn explained that the experiment with the Hua Thang community was modified from a concept of community policing that had been adopted previously.
He reviewed that programme and put emphasis on the self-reliance approach to help restore peace and order in a targetted community.
With the Hua Thang community, the ''us and them'' sentiment towards police is gone and police have helped the community fix problems it encounters.
He said the reduced crime rate illustrated the success of the experiment.
More people wear jewellery on the streets without fear of being robbed. Drug abuse is rare and motorcycle racing has disappeared from the community since police and residents set up a security kiosk which they jointly operate.
There is also less criticism by residents of police.
''Police are people and people are police. We must be partners and work to guard the communities against threats and vices,'' Pol Col Thinnakorn said.
He said cooperative dialogue can pre-empt problems. In June, a group of Buddhist youngsters in Hua Thank was involved in a gunfight with another group of Muslim youths in a dispute over drugs.
The Hua Thang residents were concerned the row could ignite clashes between Buddhist and Muslim communities which could spin out of control.
Police asked religious leaders on both sides to bring families and relatives of the rival youths to the table where both sides put their heads together.
The groups talked their problems through at a Hua Thang community hall with the police present as witnesses. The conflict was settled amicably and the youths agreed to enter a drug rehabilitation scheme.
Pol Col Thinnakorn said the next step would be to disarm young people in the community who carry illegal firearms, supposedly to protect themselves.
He said state officials must be seen to be on the side of the communities and be part of them if they are to understand and combat the problems.
The Hua Thang community model could be adapted in the far South to tame hostility there.
However, Pol Col Thinnakorn conceded that introducing the idea in the insurgent-prone Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat provinces may be more challenging, as distrust between locals and authorities goes deeper.
But to beat the separatist violence, community relations must be forged all the same.
If communities in the far South were to follow the Hua Thang model, only police who are natives of the areas should be sent in.
Other officers may be regarded as outsiders and their lives could be in danger, Pol Col Thinnakorn said.
Contact Crime Track: crimetrack@bangkokpost.co.th