The Sri Lankan Judiciary recently sentenced the former Senior Deputy Inspector General of Police (SDIG) in charge of the Sabaragamuwa Province to five years imprisonment over trying to influence a fellow police officer and prevent a government politician being arrested over a shooting. 

The wheels of justice turning and holding those who enforce it accountable, is a refreshing sight. Particularly, due to the long-standing impunity some police officers seem to work with. Over the last several decades, lack of oversight, politicisation of the service, militarisation of the Police and detonation of professionalism has left the police service in shambles. Heavy-handed tactics, and police brutality are routinely reported in the media, and have become the norm, not the exception. It is tragic that several generations of Sri Lankans have been brought up believing that the police are expected to act heavy handedly. The Police Department has been long viewed as a corrupt organisation, mainly due to politicisation and bribery.

The Court sentence given to the former Senior DIG is one of the few instances that a senior policeman has been prosecuted successfully and sentenced to prison. Four years since the Easter Sunday bombings, the governance, security and law enforcement failure to prevent or at least mitigate the impact of the bombings have gone largely unpunished, with a few being held accountable, for not acting on credible and actionable intelligence which was received by several top cops. The fact that Sri Lankan Police, even with its extensive experience in combating terrorism gathered over the thirty year long war, failed to act, even when there was actionable intelligence received, has been a clear indictment of the state of affairs at the Police Department in the eyes of the public.

Over the years, there have been multiple occasions where the Police have displayed criminal behaviour, police brutality or barefaced incompetency. The arrest of 15 officers from the Police Narcotics Bureau (PNB) in possession of a haul of nearly 200 kg of heroin for drug trafficking a few years ago, and their alleged links to organised crime did not come as a surprise to many Sri Lankans, as police collusion in illegal activities and crime, particularly which of narcotics trafficking and selling, has long known. Similarly, the number of acts of police brutality and custodial deaths reported over the last decade are many. A spate of custodial deaths, linked to high profile narcotics suspects has cast a dark shadow over the possibility of the Police’s attempts to suppress their testimony before courts. They have however, maintained their long-used ‘suspect tried to pick up a weapon which was hidden, and shoot at us’ or ‘tried to lob a grenade’ while ‘showing’ the Police where evidence was buried – explanation. The explanation has now come under criticism by the Judiciary.

Similarly, issues with lack of professionalism, training and abuse of power by the Police keep propping up. The April 2022 protest in Rambukkana, and the response from the Police to it, is now before courts. The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) found that the Police had used excessive force and caused an unjustifiable death of the late Kuruwitage Chaminda Lakshan. Five others were injured due to police gunfire during the crackdown at Rambukkana that day. According to the HRCSL report, “police officers have aimlessly shot at the people and failed to target the shooting within the legally-prescribed target area, which is below the knee of a person”. The use of heavy-handed tactics by the Police was observed by the HRCSL as “police officers had very little knowledge on the operation of the lethal weapon that was given to them to be used during the crowd control operation. Upon inquiry it was also evidenced that they have not been provided with updated and adequate training on the use of such lethal weapons by the relevant authorities prior to their deployment for the crowd control operation. lt was also revealed that one of the police officers was of the opinion that he was too old to effectively handle a T56 weapon and is incompetent of shooting despite him being deployed to a crowd control operation with a lethal weapon”

At the turn of the century, a survey carried out by Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) indicated that many Sri Lankans viewed this 150 plus year old institution as the ‘most corrupt’ state institution. A more recent survey in 2017 indicated that public sentiments about the Police unchanged a decade and half later. When will the Government– who has expressed the need to reform and restructure the State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) to make them more transparent and accountable – turn their attention to critical instruments of democratic and good governance, like the Police Department ?