POLICE investigation action starts with either a petition or a complaint by an aggrieved person or by an agency over a misdemeanor or some criminal conduct to a superior police officer ranging from the Inspector General of Police, IGP, to any of his numerous offices.

The Divisional Police Officer, DPO, is the closest Senior officer to the people at the Local Government Area or wherever, and depending on the type of station, some DPOs have well over 100 police officers under their control and command.

Good DPOs maintain a good balance with the traditional rulers, and local politics of their area to preempt and control crime, and enforce the law. They are the law as the case may be. Thus, the bad image of the Police in Nigeria, stems from who the DPO is, his understanding of the import of his office, and the role of the police in maintaining a safe and peaceful society. A good DPO often is a good listener, takes his decisions, and moves on without beating about the bush, and allowing himself to be manipulated by the rich and powerful.

On the same token, a bad DPO is self-opinionated, shouts at every one, tries to apply the law wrongly to suit his whims and caprices. He can turn a case against the complainant and charge him to court with anything just to punish him for not compromising.

To him, it does not matter whether the charge is subsequently struck off or not, his interest is to subject the victim to Nigeria’s difficult legal system, where he could end up in prison custody if his bail is not well handled in court. Something needs to be done about DPOs who upturn cases against complainants and charge frivolous cases to court, because they contribute to creating the fear in most citizens for police stations causing citizens to keep certain crimes such as domestic violence, rape, battery, etc. from being reported.

The DPO is very important in the police chain of command, and care should be taken to select who to make a DPO, in order to improve on the image of the police in society.

DPOs report to Area Commanders, who report to the Commissioner of Police, CP, in the state, who in turn reports to Assistant Inspector General, AIG, who controls and commands a few states in the Zone. There are other Police formations commanded by CPs, to address specialised cases, such the Police Special Fraud Unit in Ikoyi, Lagos etc.

Once a case is established, it is assigned to a police investigation officer, IPO, who will handle the case file and report to his superiors, and what becomes of that case depends majorly on who the IPO is, his knowledge, biases and idiosyncrasies. Most DPOs use Sergeants as IPOs, they lead other lower ranks in their team, and they are the link between the senior and junior officers and can make and unmake.

They are so useful, yet mostly untrained, raw, and lack knowledge in the application of law and enforcement. The training of this cadre of officers have become so crucial at this stage of our democratic experience in policing, and with the social pulls in our nation. Most sergeants are not computer literate, cannot understand and handle most mobile phone applications, some even regard such knowledge as risky which disposes persons to criminal conduct!

One cannot really blame them, when some of our law makers are so unfamiliar with the internet, that they would need special training for Facebook applications. One wonders what they do with the I pads they carry about.

However, the IGP must pay special attention to the education and training of these junior officers. Nigeria rushed into internet banking without providing adequate infrastructure and training to back up management and monitoring of systems to dictate crimes associated with the internet even before they are consummated.

The Current control of forex transactions by the CBN poses different kinds of challenges for IPOs. For example, when a person is carrying more than five ATM cards, and average IPO treats him with suspicion, irrespective of where he may be domiciled. Internet banking allows diaspora account holders who carry ATM cards. The new CBN restriction which reduced the amount a person can with draw from his account through the ATM from $500 to just $300 per day, means that a trader overseas will have to wait for 10 days to be able to pull out $5000 to pay for his goods. What they do to beat this, is to apply and get many ATM cards, to be able to meet their requirements as quickly as possible.

Some of them carry up to ten ATM cards around, and when they run into an IPO for any reasons, they become suspects of Card fraud from the onset. The average Nigerian business man, suffers to make his money, and suffers to use it; he queues to deposit his money, cannot withdraw or deposit more than $300 per day, and any arrangement he makes to overcome these challenges lands him as a suspect before an IPO. Our CBN should consider the comfort of the majority of the common man in their efforts to churn out policies to police fraud in our finance system.

Our banking systems are increasingly becoming exposed to the devils called hackers, and when an account holder becomes a victim of such an incidence, it is only necessary that care  be taken to get to the root of the matter, with the constitutional doctrine of presumed innocence until proven otherwise applied in such cases. IPOs do not understand this. The victim is a crook as far as they are concerned, so the victim is detained, humiliated, for an action that is completely alien to him. Our IPOs should be placed ahead of these developments through training and exposure, to minimize the sufferings and humiliation of victims of bank account related internet frauds.

The IPO is so important in achieving good investigation results, and should be so accommodated in training and human resource development programmes of the Police.

Mr  Clement Udegbe, a lawyer, wrote from Lagos.