The Osun Police Command on Tuesday inaugurated the “Community Policing Committee” to assist in recruiting special constabularies that would support the operation of the force in the state as well as secure remote communities.
Mr Johnson Kokumo, the Commissioner of Police in the state, said at the inauguration in Osogbo that the committee intended to take security back to remote areas.
Kokumo said members of the committees include Divisional Police Officers, Officers in Charge of police posts and local government chairmen.
Others, he said, are religious leaders and traditional rulers.
He, however, said traditional rulers and DPOs would co-chair the committees at the divisional level.
The commissioner said community policing committees would exist and be synchronized with police formations.
“It is believed that members of the community policing committee know everybody in their community.
“They will be the ones to recruit credible individuals from their communities as police special constabularies that will be trained by the police.
“The constabularies will have the powers of the conventional police as we have them today and they will be the people that will now work in the various communities hand in hand with the existing conventional police’’, he said.
He said the community policing committee would be replicated at all levels of the police formation up to the state level.
The Osun Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Mr Bayo Adeleke, who represented the governor at the programme, urged the people of the state to embrace the Federal Government’s community policing initiative.
Adeleke implored the committee members to be sincere, honest and diligent in the discharge of their given responsibilities and roles, stating that they should, in no way, harbour criminal elements even if related to them.
He also urged the local government chairmen to provide the logistics for the police constabularies, when recruited, so that the people of the state would enjoy maximum security and government protection. (NAN)
