Mumbai: Actress Pooja Bhatt was speaking for all the citizens of Bandra when she tagged the Mumbai Police in her post on ‘X’, saying: “Can this lawlessness please be curbed @MumbaiPolice @CPMumbaiPolice. We need more Police presence in Bandra. The city & especially the queen of the suburbs, have never felt so unsafe before.”

The brazen gun attack on actor Salman Khan's sea-facing residence Galaxy Apartments ,the gunning down of former MLA Baba Siddique in the presence of hundreds of people allegedly by the Lawrence Bishnoi gang and the brutal knife attack on actor Saif Ali Khan have tarnished the image of the police like never before.

Said Bandra-based activist Aftab Siddique: "I have been living in the area for the past several years. But never have witnessed such a bad law and order situation. What is worse is that the police have stopped listening to complaints from citizens." Many people are asking whatever happened to the Mumbai police which was once upon a time rated as the best force in the country.

Is the state government to be blamed for this situation? In its wisdom, the government tweaked the hierarchy by creating a new post of special police commissioner. Earlier the force was headed by the commissioner, who was assisted by several joint commissioners, region wise additional commissioners, zonal deputy commissioners etc.

Now there is dual authority at the top with Vivek Phansalkar being the commissioner and on par with him is Deven Bharti as special commissioner. The government justified the creation of the new post of special commissioner by pointing out the situation in Delhi. However, the requirements of Delhi are vastly different from Mumbai.

The chain of command has been broken in Mumbai and this has created avoidable complications in managing the crime situation. Also, the crime branch units are complaining that they are unable to take decisions on their own since no arrests can now be effected without the approval of the joint commissioner (crime). In the past, crime branch units were livewire branches who could afford to be proactive.

In the past, the crime intelligence unit (CIU) had played a critical role in gathering information about organised crime and individual criminals at the micro level. Now the CIU is not as effective as it was in the past. For example, it has little information about the Lawrence Bishnoi gang.

The damage to the force commenced with the then police commissioner Parambir Singh openly crossing swords with home minister Anil Deshmukh. The arrest of inspector Sachin Vaze in connection with the planting of gelatine sticks near the mansion of top industrialist Mukesh Ambani and the subsequent murder of businessman Manukh Hiren dealt a body blow to the image of the police from which it is yet to recover.

The city witnessed the shocking spectacle of policemen from Khar planting drugs to implicate a man at the best of a builder. A senior inspector is facing charge of extortion, but till date no action has been taken against him.

The police were tipped off about the RS 1,000 cr Torres ponzi scam. But for one full month they did not act which resulted in hundreds of investors losing their hard-earning savings. In the Baba Siddque murder case, his son and ex-MLA Zeeshan had given a list of builders whom he suspected to be behind the gunning down on his father. But the police have not found it necessary to call even one of them for interrogation.