Abstract
Police forces, traditionally, were tacitly assumed to be rule-bound, legalistic, bureaucratic organisations, in which top-down policies prevailed through a quasi-militaristic rank hierarchy and strict discipline code (Reiner,2016). The profile of the police organisations has been radically transforming, in view of the wider politico-economic and cultural context of re-emerging conflicts and social divisions in the recent past. Because of loose ends in the legal powers and processes, police officers at the operational level were characterised by the extent of discretion on how to behave or misbehave (Newburn & Reiner, 2012).
An empirical study was carried out in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh using Convenience sampling on 680 (340 respondents from police from different cadres and public each through separate structured questionnaires for each category of respondents), covering three variables, namely police beat, patrolling and responding to public calls.
This article presents how Visakhapatnam Police could focus on the beat and patrolling, responding to public calls as part of aligning its working processes and bring in the cultural change not only in the Police Organisation as a whole, but also among the stakeholders. The Visakha Police is today known to be more citizen-friendly, tech-savvy and relatively fast in addressing and resolving issues.
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