Gombe State Police command has hosted a town hall meeting with stakeholders to strengthen partnership and collaboration with community members in policing the state.
The state commissioner of Police, Bello Yahaya during the meeting held at Matrix School in Gombe, explained that the programme themed, “Community and the Police: Fostering Deeper Public Participation for Effective Service Delivery” was part of activities marking the maiden National Police Day celebration in the state.
He said the meeting was aimed at strengthening collaboration between the police and the public to ensure crime prevention and control as well as to enhance trust, transparency and community involvement in policing efforts.
While promising that the inputs of the stakeholders would be considered, the police boss emphasised that ensuring effective and responsive policing requires community engagement, assuring that such meeting would be held periodically.
The chairman of the occasion and a retired Kano State commissioner of Police, Muhammad Wakili, urged serving officers to avoid corruption and unethical practices to retain public trust and get their cooperation in ensuring a safe society.
Our correspondent reports that many of the panelists during the event advocated ban on collection and extortion of the public by some police officers and stations in order to sanitise policing and address criminality.
