The residents of the nation’s capital have been applauded for their mature approach in celebrating the festive season.
NCD metropolitan superintendent, Perou N’Dranou, made this comment following a successful New Year police operation.
A majority of the city residents heralded in the New Year with excitement, laughter, joy and most importantly, respect for each other and the law.
A satisfied NCD police boss said people’s behaviour keeps changing for the better every year.
“So on behalf of the metropolitan command in NCD, I would like to congratulate the residents of the city for being mature in celebrating the festive season and at the same time, I must thank all my police officers involved in this operation for their sacrifice and dedication in ensuring we achieved the aim of the operation,” stated N’Dranou.
Though the NCD Command did not get extra funding for the Christmas and New Year operation, the chief superintendent said they came up with a simple yet effective strategy that started five weeks ago and consisted of three phases.
“Phase one was public awareness that involved awareness done into all suburbs to behave and not to involve in any illegal activities during the festive season,” outlined N’Dranou. “Second part of the awareness was, we deployed police for high police visibility in the public areas or crime hotspots to deter crimes as well as conducting roadblocks with the Road Transport Authority from the end of November to late December.”
N’Dranou said the third part of the awareness involved what was called “stop, question and search”.
The second phase of the police operation started a few days before Christmas where three major roadblocks were conducted in the city. The aim of this exercise was to provide high police visibility, prevent drink driving that could lead to road fatalities, remove unroadworthy and unregistered vehicles from public roads as well as clamping down on unlicensed drivers.
“And the most important part of the phase too was to give confidence to the public that police would be available during the festive season,” N’Dranou said.
The final phase was the New Year deployment which saw police once again conduct roadblocks starting on December 30th as well as positioning themselves in hotspots where residents would likely gather in numbers to celebrate.
“Generally the operation was very successful during its implementation of phase one, two and three.”
Less crime being reported during the three phases, high police visibility and positive comments from members of the public indicated to police the success of their operation.