Reforms: Police Receive Policy Document on Arrest, Custody Management, Investigations

Kingsley Nwezeh

Police authorities have received six newly developed policy documents on Standards of Practice (SOP) on custody management and investigations, aimed at improving the management of suspects in police custody.

The documents are focused on arrest and management of persons in police detention and custody, conducting stop and search, search and seizures, identification parades, investigative interviewing and criminal investigation.

Speaking at an event where the document was presented to the management of the Nigeria Police Force, the Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG) in charge of Training and Development, DIG Dan-Mallam Mohammed, said the SOPs were requirements of the force to achieve transformation.

DIG Dan-Mallam further said the nature and complexity of crimes had changed over the last four decades and this further underlined the need for the SOPs.

“They are what the Nigerian police force needs to respond more effectively to new crime dynamics. The documents would help to improve police knowledge and expertise, while providing a practical context for further legislative improvements to the new Police Act”, he said.

In his remarks, a Retired Assistant Inspector-General of police, Mr Austin Iwar, who led the development of the SOPs as a consultant to the EU-funded Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption (RoLAC) programme of the British Council, said the SOPs were the culmination of long-drawn efforts to address gaps in policing operations and extant police force orders, through standards and guidelines that help the police apply international best standards in the context policing.

He said they became necessary because many operational processes in the police force are governed by colonial-era force orders that were no longer adequate for the security challenges confronting Nigeria.

The national programme manager of the RoLAC programme, Danladi Plang, also said the SOPs were developed with and validated by senior officers in the police force, who were nominated by the inspector-general of police to be part of developing the documents and as such, the SOPs were documents over which the police can rightly assert ownership.

Also speaking at the handover, Pietro Tilli, the representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that the SOPs will help transform policing operations because they domesticate best international standards.

The RoLAC programme is now developing training manual and resources on the SOPs for the purpose of training police officers on new custody management standards.