Innovative policing is his forte

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Twenty years ago, when then young IPS official Prateep V. Philip talked about the concept of Friends of Police (FoP), many in the department looked at him with disbelief. Over time FoP has become an effective tool to bridge the gap between the police and public.

Philip also received the Queen’s award in 2002 for innovation in police training and development for the FoP initiative.

The officer, who always lobbied for thinking minds in the department rather than people who just flex muscle, is currently additional director general of police, crime, fighting drug abuse through his idea of “drug busters” in schools.

Philip, who is now 51 years old, is already in touch with more than 250 schools in the city to form drug busters in the institutions. “The interested students will spread awareness about the ill effect of drugs among their peers and help prevent drug abuse,” the official said.

After FoP concept, Philip had come up with “equilibrium thinking”, which not only promotes positive thinking but also repels negativity. “For success in life positive thinking alone is not enough. One has to get rid off negativity,” explained Philip.

“Sequential learning” is another idea that he has stressed on as it has proven highly useful for him during his college days. “As a Plus-2 student way back in 1979, it helped a lot. The idea is to revise your lessons in a manner in which it is split into many small parts and every time a new portion is revised you go back to its previous lessons,” the official revealed.

”It is easy to remember earlier portions if you recall it every time you learn a new lesson. You spend less time on it and it gets stored in your brain. It is less time consuming. It helped me be among the top ten students in the class in my Plus-2 examinations,” he said.

The officer even had an answer to economies failing. “I will suggest that they try ‘execnomics’ (the pursuit of excellence) rather than capitalism or communism. If you try to better what you do on a continuous basis, nobody can ignore you. Be it individuals or countries,” he noted.

Police personnel do not have to only remove crime from the streets. If you remove it from the minds of the people you can prevent it from happening in the streets, he said.