From Ighomuaye Lucky, Benin
In a bid to tackle human trafficking, cult-related activities, drugs and other Serious Organized Crimes (SOC), in Edo State, the CLEEN Foundation in collaboration with TAG International, has trained stakeholders to assist security agencies in the fight against the vices.
The stakeholders who include civil rights groups, security agencies and others, were trained as members of the Crime Prevention Partnership (CPP).
They are to help security agencies to combat and prevent crime from happening.
Speaking during the two days of training, the Executive Director, CLEEN Foundation, Peter Gad, said the people in the community can assist the security agencies in crime reduction when they understand how the CPP works.
He said the people of the community are closer to them (those intending to go into crime) than the security agencies noting that security is a collective responsibility of all and not for the law enforcement agencies alone.
“We are talking about prevention of organized crimes in such a way that people even on their own, work with their Divisional Police Officers ( DPOs) and other police officers and security agencies to prevent all of these crimes that happen at the community levels either cultism, human trafficking, organized rape, and other crimes that happen but in an organized manner.
“So, we had this kind of training in Zamfara, we had one in Bayelsa, Lagos and so we are doing that of Edo today and we are hoping that the training will be able to enhance our collective safety and the people that we are training are what we call the CPP.
“You have a composition of several persons that form the CPP and we hope that they will be able to take down the training to their members and use it for the good of the community,” Gad said.
He said the pilot project is to see how the police and the civilians can work together to combat crime in the state.
On the part of the resource person, ASP Atolo Emmanuel, he said that the CPP project is meant to discourage those who have not taken to crime but are contemplating it due to peer pressure and other factors that could stir them into crime adding, with that, they could have a rethink.
While speaking on the Serious Organized Crime (SOC), he listed the four pillars that could help SOC as pursue, prevent, protect and prepare.