The Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) has protested against a report published in Prothom Alo on 26 January 2025 under the title ‘No night patrols, check posts on Dhaka streets (Policer Tollashi Tohol Kagojei)’.
The protest letter sent Monday by DMP deputy commissioner (media and public relations), Muhammad Talebur Rahaman stated that more than 250 patrol teams of DMP are deployed in the capital every night. The teams have specific duties and specific areas in their responsibility. Besides, foot patrol teams are also deployed from each police station.
In order to tighten security in areas under the jurisdiction of each police station, check posts are set up at some key points to conduct the search activities. Also, the patrol teams are more active in crime-prone areas. Whether the patrol activities are run properly or not is monitored regularly and strictly by senior officers of each crime department.
The DMP also said that the regular police patrol teams are deployed in the locations mentioned by the Prothom Alo correspondent in that report. The patrol activities are monitored round the clock. In addition to the regular police, the Dhaka Metropolitan’s Detective Branch (DB) and Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) teams are also deployed in preventing crimes like theft, robbery and sorts.
Officers of assistant commissioner, additional commissioner and deputy commissioner ranks are deployed from the DMP headquarters to supervise patrol and check post activities every night and they submit detailed reports to the higher authorities.
Superior officials including the DMP commissioner constantly supervise these and strict action is taken if any negligence or sloppiness is found in patrol or check post activities.
The DMP said that the Prothom Alo report gives an indication of all the teams going inactive at the same time, which is completely baseless and unacceptable. Besides, the report did not include a comment of any senior DMP official including the commissioner.
Correspondent’s statement
The information and data mentioned by the DMP on running the patrols and check point activities in the capital is included in the Prothom Alo report as well.
The report also mentions about the superior DMP officials monitoring these activities. In addition to that the report presented the opinions of police personnel working at the field level, where they talked about the problems they are facing.