#DJCP_Police insists bail is free

-SP Ifedolapo Badmos is the police public relations officer of the Lagos State Police Command

-In an exclusive chat with Akan Anwankwa of Naij.com, she talks about the new dawn of policing in Lagos state

Two major robbery operations occurred months ago and the robbers escaped through the waterways. What is the police doing to make marine policing effective?

The Nigeria Police Force has focused on marine policing and has greatly improved in policing the waterways. Interestingly, the lagos state government has just donated some equipment to combat crime on the waterways. Right now, the police is on top of the game and we are seriously in charge now and you can see that the robbers have not been able to penetrate through the waterways anymore.

The one that happened in Agbara, Ogun state, sometimes ago, they wanted to use the waterway, but we repelled them and out of annoyance, I believe, they entered Ogun state to wreck havoc. From all indications, we are fully prepared to combat crime through waterways.

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How quickly do the police respond to intelligence report or pieces of information given to them by the public?

The response of police have been swift, timely. We have been building on that, it is a process and we are climbing the ladder. I can proudly tell you that for us to function properly we need information because we are not spirit being.We are human beings like every other person. These days you do not to enter police station before you give information. We have social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instargram and another one is that you can call our control room as an anonymous, nobody asks of your name all they need is for to tell them your location so that they can be able to tackle that kind of incident. All in all, I want people to believe in our own police, this is our own Nigeria Police Force not the American or UK police. So the earlier the public partners with us the better we perform better so I do not want to believe in that story, it is an old story and people should depart from it because this is a new dawn of policing in Lagos state.

What can you say about the police asking for mobilisation fee when they want to make an arrest or carry out an investigation concerning an incident?

I do not want to whisk it away that it did not happen but I will say with the mechanism the Inspector General of Police has put in place, it is highly absurd for anyone to ask for any kind of mobilisation fee. But you know for every disciple there is a Judas and I do not want to say that it is not going to happen. That is why the IG has also set up what we call complaint response unit, if any police is demanding for any money you call the unit.

The CP ( Commissioner of Police) has distributed his number to everybody. Very soon we’ll distribute a phone directory to members of the public where if you have any complaint you call the station. If we see such, please let us report, that is the feedback from the society. If we are not getting feedback, we will not know how to tackle and the complaint lingers. If anything like that is happening, call the CP’s number, call the PPRO number, call our control room and immediately we tackle it because we can not whisk it away that there are always bad eggs in every egg.

Everybody knows that bail is free but in context we do not see the police practise this phenomenon. Is bail really free?

Bail is free, in principle, in action, in everything that connotes freedom, Bail is free. If anyone is telling you to pay for bail, still boils down to the fact that you have to still call the CP, the PPRO and we will look into it. Some people are acting for themselves not acting for the police, but they hide under that uniform to commit illegality. So if people are giving us feedback we tackle it. So members of the public, the state command is aware that bail is free.

Recently, Governor Ambode donated some equipment to the police force, how has it been effectively used?

We still want to reinstate the fact that we are grateful to the Lagos state government for providing all the logistics, equipment and every other thing. Now we deploy helicopters for area patrol, which moves from place to place and gives us reports on the spot situation. It has been working and you will agree with me that in December, the crime actually went so low and in a cosmopolitan society, you can not eradicate crime, you can only reduce it to the barest minimum. So if you have one or two complaints we can say that it is an effect of the cosmopolitan society. But in all we have effectively deployed all the equipment and they are working according to our operational strategy. During a  town hall meeting held recently, the lagos state government said that crime has reduced by 65 percent and we are looking forward to reducing it by 10 percent.

We still see stop and search activities on the highways and streets, why is that trend coming back?

It is because of the kind of crime being committed by people such as kidnapping and terrorism so that people can not move freely without being checked. So the IG just gave an order to return the stop and search. So our men are not static, they move from place to place. It is a depart from the old ways where the men will block the road and collect money from people. But now they stop people and search and when you have nothing incriminating they tell you to go.

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