Bangalor police to open their doors to children

[farook]

Another Great initiative by the Bangalore City Police


Every last Saturday of the month, students can visit stations to learn more

If you students and children want to know more about your local police and how the station looks, what the police does, who will be inside the lock-ups, you can walk freely into any police station across the city on the last Saturday of every month, starting from November 29. The last Saturdays of every month will be observed as 'Children Visit Day to Police Station', an effort to make police more children-friendly, said city police commissioner M N Reddi during a seminar on child abuse at his office on Infantry Road on Saturday.

The image of a policeman is generally used to scare children right from childhood, by their mothers, for every small mistake they make. This remains in the minds of the children and will continue to remain the same even after they become adults. In order to come out of this scary image, we are making an effort to make police more children-friendly by allowing them to walk freely into any police stations on the last Saturdays of every month, the commissioner said.

On the lines of the National Cadet Corps (NCC), we will be launching Student Police Corps where students can be the eyes and ears of the policemen. Students will be trained in first-aid, gathering and passing on necessary information to policemen along with other skills. "The Karnataka State Child Safety Policy" which deals with child safety, is in its final stages and would be tabled in a short period, he said.

"Any child abuse case is taken extremely seriously and only women police officers are assigned to carry out investigations. We have also approached the High Court requesting speedy trials in such cases, which might result in convictions, he added.


From Here http://www.bangaloremirror.com/bangalor ... 161514.cms

[essdee1972]

Students will be trained in first-aid, gathering and passing on necessary information to policemen along with other skills.

The intention seems to be good, but after what happened in East Germany and other parts behind the Iron Curtain, one wonders what the future will be!

[goodboy_mentor]

gathering and passing on necessary information to policemen along with other skills

I am not at all impressed by this move of Bangalore Police of involving children. Job of police informer( i.e. gathering and passing information) is a serious business that can even entail risk to life. Children should be kept away from this kind of business. Moreover there might be some legal issues related to using children to do this kind of work.

The intention seems to be good, but after what happened in East Germany and other parts behind the Iron Curtain, one wonders what the future will be!

Please pardon my ignorance. Could you please tell something more of what happened in those countries?

[essdee1972]

GBM, my intention was to point out that in totalitarian countries, children were/are often used to spy on adults, including their parents, most notably by Stasi in East Germany. This information was later used to visit all kinds of inconveniences on the said adults, including arrest, torture, and summary execution, even for things like tuning on to forbidden radio stations like the BBC.

Now, I am aware (and hope) that we (India) are not likely to go the Ceaucescu route anytime soon, but this "passing on information to police" things ring all sorts of alarms.

Taking the "indoctrination of children" idea a bit further, Hitler Youth was started as an equivalent to Boy Scouts, but went on to worse things. Even Lord Baden-Powell started scouts as a way to "catch 'em young", after his experiences as a scout and spy in the Boer Wars. Fortunately, Baden-Powell or the government he served didn't go the whole hog, and Scouts remains an honorable organisation till today.