Sports programmes can play a vital role in breaking barriers between police and the community besides strengthening community policing in Pakistan, said visiting officers from New York Police Department's (NYPD) Community Affairs Bureau. Speaking at a youth cricket skills camp, organized by US embassy at Saidpur Cricket Ground, NYPD Detective Elvis Vukelj said that the visiting NYPD officers and Pakistanis police have exchanged knowledge regarding concrete ways to ensure productive relation between police and communities.
"Effective relation between police and community is mandatory for community policing", he said, adding that community policing is key to proactively curb crime. He said that arrangement of such type of sports activities would help allowing police to engage constructively with youth, women and other key audiences in Pakistan.
"Today, a cricket camp help in showing the youth participants that police officers are not outsiders to be feared, but community members who are here to support their people", he said. These types of sports activities, he added, can help both American and Pakistan police to engage constructively with our communities. US Embassy Chargé d'Affaires Jonathan Pratt said that in Pakistan and US young people bear the promise of the future, the police are an integral part of ensuring that we all have the security necessary to work toward that future and sports units us across social, economic and political barriers.
"Cricket is starting to enter the US market", he said. Representatives of NYPD, Pakistani police, Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), Mashal Model School, Pakistan Boy Scouts Association, Pakistan Sweet Home, and the English access micro-scholarship programme and local youth groups participated in a youth cricket skills camp aimed at building a strong relationship between police officers and their community. More than one hundred students and police then completed the cricket drill together.