Police Shape security ahead of presidential elections

Gambian Police are shaping up security operation across the country ahead of the December 4 presidential elections – in a bid to curbing rising crime rates and its related activities.

The shaping will include equipping police stations and posts with materials needs to help them effectively, execute their services, noting that The Gambia has seen a sharp rise in crime rates – which are linked to rising rate of youth unemployment.

Speaking to The Voice, Police spokesman Lamin Njie said: “we are intensifying our security operations to ensure our routine patrol especially when to the fight against crime which is seriously intensifying.”

“We are also working on intelligence gathering because we know when it comes to election, we need to do a lot in gathering the criminal intelligence for that matter.”

“We are also working hard to ensure that police station infrastructure and facility are very well improved to be able to support the operation that is conducted there.

“In 2021 we have done a review of our activities of 2020 and some of the issues we have engage in are regarding the fight against crime, the achievements and the set back and the challenges, we have done analyses of this so we are putting in place a proper plan especially the fact that 2021 is election year,” Superintend Njie said.

He revealed that the office of the Inspector General of Police has decided to open has new police stations across the country to help in enhancing the welfare of officers so that their performance will be a great.

He continued: “even at the level of police station are encouraging police officers to patrol their vicinities to be able to relate with the community members so that they will also facilitate collaboration with those communities.”

He said they selling out democratic policing concept like community policing, democratic policing, problem solving, adding “we understand that the previous regime the culture was different from democratic culture.”