Union Home Minister, P Chidambaram on Wednesday stressed the need for Capacity building by providing adequate police personnel to man the police stations in the country, and said adequate funds should be provided with matching technology to tackle crime rates in the country.

To confront crime, every police force requires adequate number of police personnel.

By March this year, there were 400,000 vacancies in all police stations in the country.

“It is not as if we cannot find 400,000 personnel. The reason is not far to see”, Chidambaram said after inaugurating the three day International conference on ‘Global Community Policing conclave’  in Kochi being attended by police personnel from 42 countries.

The reason is in many states, finance ministers are loathe to allocate funds to police and it is the residue which is allocated to the police, he said.

There is need to make up deficiencies in the police force, he said.

”Unless we marry technology and police, the police personnel will remain far behind law breakers”, he said.

There is so much intelligence information pouring in and there is need for analysing the same to keep pace with time; he said adding unfortunately this area is neglected.

In the name of Innovation, the concept of community policing should not be trivilaised, he said adding there were good and bad examples of community policing.

Cautioning the Community police personnel to be on guard against ‘self styled’ leaders he said they should not abdicate their responsibility.

Giving examples he said the ‘Salwa Judum’ movement in Chhattisgarh where young men of the community were given arms to counter serious internal threats and in West Bengal where political party cadres had been armed to counter the threat of Maoists are two bad examples of community policing.

Police cannot abdicate their responsibility for private militia, he said.

The ‘Janamaitriyi Suraksha Project (JSEP) in Kerala and Delhi’s ‘Eyes and Ears’ were good examples of community policing which had helped in crushing crime rates, he said.

Community Policing is an exercise in trust which can be build only through partners who are equal.

Police today is required by community as much as community requires police.

The community is more than the elected representatives in municipalities, Legislatures and Parliament.