About 119 Police - Kabul City Police
119 Police Call Centre
The 24-hour, seven-day week call centre enables the public to report police misconduct, human rights violations and corruption, as well as crimes and terrorist activity. A member of the public can call 119 from a telephone anywhere in Afghanistan. There are also call centres in Kandahar and Lashkar Gah.
During 2012, the 119 call centre received 15,859 calls of a serious nature, which were dealt with immediately. Of all the calls, 1,293 were complaints about police misconduct, misuse of police vehicles and corruption. Excluding complaints against the police, well over half the calls received were related to harassment or violence. For example, 675 of the calls concerned hooliganism, 509 death threats, 417 armed robberies and 573 either fighting or beatings. A serious problem for the 119 police call centre is false or nuisance calls. Only one in eight calls is genuine, and many of the calls are to harass the female operators of 119. Such calls waste operators’ time and can prevent genuine callers from reaching help.
The 119 call centre is part of the community policing approach and serves the public. It has helped save lives as in the incident of a kidnapped man left tied to a tree in Kapisa and the call that led to the dismantling of a roadside bomb in Ghazni.
119 Police Call Centre
‘Public to Police and Police to Public’
The Ministry of Interior established the first 119 police call centre in Kabul in 2009. The 119 police call centre is funded by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and has 58 staff members, seven of whom are women. Staff members work in three shifts to maintain a 24-hour service, seven days a week. The purpose of establishing the call centre was to enable the public to report police misconduct, human rights violations and corruption, as well as crimes and terrorist activity. A member of the public can call 119 from any telephone anywhere in Afghanistan.
With the help of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Ministry established a second call centre in Kandahar in 2011 as an emergency services tip-line. It currently has four operational cell phones lines. A call centre was created in Lashkar Gah in 2009 by the Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) as a crime stoppers line. It was integrated into the Ministry of Interior Affairs in 2011 and currently has two operational cell phone lines.
119 Police Call Centre Activities
The number of calls has grown swiftly since the 119 police call centre was established. During 2012, it received 15,859 calls from various provinces on matters of a serious nature and all were dealt with immediately. Of the 15,859 calls, 1,293 were complaints about police misconduct, misuse of police vehicles and corruption. Excluding complaints against the police, well over half the calls received were related to harassment or violence against people. For example, 675 of the calls concerned hooliganism, 509 death threats, 417 armed robberies and 573 either fighting or beatings. The calls received are forwarded to various police units for response. For example, calls on insurgency or suspicious activities are sent to the Quick Response Force (QRF) to take immediate action.
A serious problem for the 119 police call centre is the number of false and nuisance calls that it receives. Only one in eight calls is genuine, and many of the calls are to harass the female operators
of 119. While such false and nuisance calls are time consuming and waste the operators’ time, they can also prevent callers with genuine problems from reaching the help they need. The Ministry has consulted with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and other counterparts on this issue, and as a result a small charge will be imposed on 119 calls to discourage false and nuisance calls.
119 Police Call Centre Achievements
The 119 police call centre is part of the community policing approach the Ministry of Interior is developing to provide better service to the people of Afghanistan. The following two incidents, which occurred in 2012, indicate how the 119 police call centre plays a part in building cooperative relationships between the police and the people.
In the first incident, on June 25th 2012, the 119 centre received a call from a man in the 11th district of Kabul city reporting that his son had taken some passengers in his white Corolla car to Kapisa and had been missing since then. The 119 police contacted Kapisa police who immediately created check posts in some areas and found the car in Shokhi district. Four suspects were arrested. They confessed they had tied the driver in a tree in Tank Baba area near Bagram district. The police went to the spot, found the driver and freed him.
In another case, on September 2012 a person from Gelan district of Ghazni province contacted the 119 police call centre to report that some suspicious people were trying to plant something in
the main road of Qalai Taj area of Gelan district. The 119 police contacted the police in Ghazni province who immediately conducted an operation to capture the suspects. With the help of international forces they dismantled a roadside improvised explosive device (IED).