CIVPOL Home >> Newspaper Articles >> Preparing for a more ‘Normal’ Policing

Preparing for a more ‘Normal’ Policing
by
Neeraj K Singh

Station Commander Sajjad Tareen was a worried man. The latest crime data delivered on the morning of Sunday, 8th July, confirmed the disturbing crime trend he had been noticing. Over the past month there had been a perceptible increase in the incidence of burglary in the area of Station # 4 in Pristina. His efforts at special briefings of Team Leaders and intensification of patrolling had been in vain. It seemed to keep recurring with an almost rhythmic predictability. If only he could predict where and when; if only he could find a pattern to the crime.

In his two years in the Mission in Kosovo, Tareen had been involved in several operations against more dangerous crimes – murders, arson, kidnappings, and evictions. With even fewer resources than he now had at his disposal, he had organised his men in successful raids against perpetrators of ethnic violence and organised crime. The results had been encouraging. Over the past year, there had been a definite decline in violent crime and now, nearing his end of Mission, he was legitimately looking forward to going home to Pakistan with the satisfaction of having helped to improve Kosovo.

But these recent occurrences had somewhat dampened his sense of achievement. The burglars lurking in the dark alleys of Dardania and Ulpiana were operating with striking regularity challenging the entirety of UNMIK Police and the KPS.

Violent crime is definitely sensational – in its perpetration (by the criminal) and control (by the police). Just as it generates a strong social revulsion against the crime, so it also infuses in the policeman a zeal motivated by a strong desire to curb it with all the resources at his disposal. By the sheer impunity of his act, the violent criminal issues a challenge that the policeman accepts with resolve.

The burglar by contrast operates on the sly. He uses no guns or bombs to proclaim the commission of his crime. His tools for break-in work more silently. He is no doubt anti-social, but is not perceived by the public as a grave danger to society. His actions do not generate a popular condemnation or attract enough media attention. And yet, such crimes against property affect the lives of ordinary people more than does violent crime or the organised crime of the underworld. The burglar may not kill, but can well cripple an entire generation of his innocent victims by taking away, for example, the lifetime savings of a retired couple or money kept away for the education of children.

To the policeman, the burglar is like a cancer that slowly saps the police of its moral authority. Precisely because it is less sensational, committed by small time criminals, persisting like the wild weed that endangers a healthy crop. It does not constitute a grave enough crime for the police to dedicate a disproportionately large part of its limited resources to fight it; and yet every other case adds to the sense of failure. For catching one of them, there are no accolades. Such crimes irritate by their very pettiness and challenge by their very repetitiveness. Most importantly, repeated occurrences of this nature tend to frustrate and demoralise the public and the police.

After all that he had gone through in these two years, Tareen was not to leave Kosovo with a sense of failure. He stared long at the crime map, with his Deputy and Chief of Investigations. And then he saw it. As the small red crime spots on the map blurred into a larger blot, a pattern began to emerge. Almost all the burglaries seemed to concentrate in the area around the Pristina Hospital and adjoining parts of Dardania and Ulpiana. Most of those were directed against motor garages and kiosks. The items targeted were machinery and motor parts.

From this crime analysis, Tareen could predict that the burglars would strike again in the same area and most likely at a motor garage or other shop having portable machines. The time would be after business hours. The sheer bulk of the machinery being stolen indicated that some mode of transport would also be used by the burglars to carry away stolen property.

Acting on this projection, a plan was devised. A special ‘Anti-Burglary Operations Group’ was formed comprising four KPS and one UNMIK Police officer. Operating in plain clothes, they were to maintain surveillance on the possible locations where the burglars were likely to strike. All patrols in the area were asked to keep a close watch over such garages and shops, particularly after business hours.

Success came on 17 July. At 1.50 am, two young men, both aged about 20 years, were arrested just after they had burgled a shop near the Green Buildings in Dardania. A computer stolen from the shop was also recovered from them. The two youths were residents of the same part of the city. Investigations revealed that they had been involved in a series of burglaries over the past month.

Their operation was simple. Being from the locality, they could move around without arousing suspicion, identifying targets to be broken into during the night. After dark, they would drive to the area and park near the shop. A crowbar and screwdriver were used to break open the lock. Gloves were used to ensure that no fingerprints were left at the scene of crime, and where there was a possibility of being identified facemasks were worn. The stolen goods were kept in one of their houses to be taken to nearby towns for disposal at a convenient time. There they would pose as persons in need for money and sell the stolen property to unsuspecting people.

Following up on this information, three police teams from Station # 4 were dispatched to Ferizaj, Prizren, Podujevo and parts of Pristina. Stolen property was recovered from several people to whom the burglars had sold goods. The total value of property recovered is estimated at 150,000 DM. The BMW used to transport stolen property was also seized. The recovered property was displayed on local TV to enable owners to identify it. As a result, several victims visited Station # 4 and claimed their property. Six cases of burglary have been verified from police records and others are being investigated. The two suspects are in detention.

There is a perceptible change in the crime trend in Kosovo over the last months. While violent crime and ethnically motivated crime are on the wane, there is a concomitant increase in crime against property such as theft and burglary. A mid-year comparison of crime data for this year with the figures for the same period last year clearly illustrates this. The number of murders in the first 6 months of 2001 has more than halved from 149 in 2000 to 69 this year, thus bringing down the weekly average from 5.7 murders last year to 2.6 this year. Violent crime against property such as arson has also fallen to a weekly average of 5.2 against a high of 13.9 cases per week last year. The total number of cases of theft and burglary taken together however has increased from 4,551 (weekly average of 175) to 5,651 (weekly average of 217.3).

This shift in the crime pattern indicates a movement towards a more normal security environment as Kosovo sheds the effects of the war. With life returning to normal, and ethnic conflict diminishing in intensity, it is to be expected that petty crimes like theft and burglary will increase in frequency as people go back to the more basic human struggle for subsistence against scarce resources. UNMIK Police is also set to change priorities from policing a post-conflict society to a fast normalising one. The people of Kosovo should take solace from the fact that the days of social upheaval are receding, as the return to normalcy indicates.