The greatest weapon

Lesson of Boston, Delhi - trust between people and police matters

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the long chase after the alleged perpetrators of the bombing of last week's Boston Marathon was the ease with which the Massachusetts state government essentially shut down its capital, transforming it into a giant crime scene. True, public transport was shut down, and some major roads were blocked. But the fact that, for nearly an entire day on Friday, one of the US' largest cities transformed itself into a ghost town to allow the state and federal police forces to do their jobs reveals the degree to which its citizens were willing to co-operate with law enforcement. When reporters fanned out across the city to ask its residents about how they were inconvenienced, they seemed to agree that they had been - but also spoke of "civic trust" and allowing the police to do the difficult job of tracing men on the run, apparently ruthless, and possibly armed with guns and explosives. When the younger of the two men accused of the bombing, the 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was finally arrested - found under a tarpaulin covering a little-used boat in the backyard of a Boston suburbanite - it became clear that the US authorities had gone to no little trouble to ensure he was taken into custody alive. It speaks well of the US government that it has so far refused to speculate on the Tsarnaev brothers' motivations - whether they were militant Islamists, secular Chechen separatists or merely two young men suffering from the very American ailment of violent alienation mixed with access to weaponry remains unknown. US President Barack Obama and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick both have emphasised against a rush to judgment, and even stressed that the US' commitment to multicultural immigration remains unimpaired.

The difference between this reaction, and those of both authorities and citizenry in India, is marked. Comparisons will obviously be drawn between the efficiency of the US pursuit and generally ineffective Indian efforts at investigation and control. But, in truth, that is the less important contrast. The more important difference is in the maturity of the administrative response and the degree of civic trust that was on display. In India, for example, members of the police force or the government are unlikely to have held off on speculation about a bomber's motives - out of prejudice, ignorance or media hunger. In this manhunt, too, false targets were identified - a "dark-skinned man", at first, by cable news, and then a missing Indian-American student by various internet vigilantes. The sorrow felt by the students' family reveals the pernicious nature of such speculation - but it is worth noting that law enforcement scotched those rumours fairly quickly, instead of feeding them.

It is also illustrative that the most crucial step in the apprehension of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev came when the man in whose suburban garden the fugitive teenager was hiding stepped out to have a cigarette, noticed something wrong with his boat, saw the young man curled up in a corner when he investigated - and was calling the police instantly. The greatest weapon law enforcement agencies possess is an alert and co-operative citizenry. But that requires trust - a trust that is sorely lacking between citizens and police in India. The disgraceful scenes outside the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, where a senior policeman slapped a woman protesting the hideous rape of a five-year old girl, shows how very far India is from achieving that sort of trust. In some ways, the Delhi Police - and some other police forces - have made great strides in sensitising themselves and in being more open to the public. But the contrast visible this weekend shows how very far there is to go.