In several homes, parents and grand-parents, especially the latter are heard telling their children and grand children that they will call the ‘police mama, if you don’t eat!’   If children don’t obey, the name of the policeman comes in handy.  Unwittingly though, this creates a kind of fear in the children about the police force. As they grow, this turns into an unfriendly attitude. They feel policemen are dreadful, heartless and cruel.

The Chennai Police have yesterday  launched a four-phased programme to reach out to children on the occasion of 'World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse,' taking them on a guided tour of some police stations in the city to start with. Indeed a welcome move.
Select students from Class VI to VIII from both Tamil and English medium schools were taken around police stations with the officials interacting with them. This is aimed at dispelling any fears among the public about the police and make it clear to them that they were "approachable." The initiative was aimed at familiarising children with police functioning. In the coming phases, selected children would go through auditioning by speaking on their visit to the police station.
A grand finale is scheduled to be held on November 25 where the police would hold an elocution contest on the title "Police is friend of children" where the winners will be suitably rewarded.

However, during yesterday’s guided tour, police personnel were in for some surprise as they had to encounter uncomfortable questions like "why are you always shown in bad light in cinemas." Officials reportedly fended off such questions even as some students wanted to know if the authorities had the power to initiate action against filmmakers portraying them in bad light. True, some of our children are indeed smart.

‘Reaching out to children’ is only one of the efforts of the City police to reach out to the public. The city police has already been taking efforts to reach out to other sections of society such as senior citizens, educational institutions and residents' welfare associations.

P.S. Entirely too much energy of our state police force is spent controlling honest citizens, simply because it is something they can succeed in doing. (Robert W. Burke)