First They Lace Up Their Skates. Then They Fight Terrorism.

To some degree, the unit is a response to a public relations crisis. Police departments in Pakistan are among the country’s “most widely feared, complained against and least trusted government institutions,” the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said in a 2016 report. Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, rose to power in 2018 in part by promising police reform.

This month, nine police officers were suspended in the eastern city of Lahore after they jailed employees of a restaurant that had refused to give them free burgers. Many people saw that incident as a sign that police corruption was still rampant.

Fear and mistrust of the police run high in Karachi, where several officers have been charged with killing civilians in staged shootouts. In one high-profile example, a police inquiry found two years ago that Karachi officers had killed an aspiring model and three others, then falsely claimed that the victims were militants. The commander in charge of the operation, Rao Anwar, is now on trial for murder.

Maqsood Ahmed, a deputy inspector general with the regional Sindh Police, said the new in-line skating unit was designed in part to address criticism that Karachi police officers didn’t know how to interact with civilians. The sight of officers on skates, he added, has helped to “lighten the mood” in malls and other family-friendly places where they patrol.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/world/asia/pakistan-inline-skating-police.html