IN ALMOST every authoritarian regime, law enforcement becomes the ruler’s weapon and later, the people’s target of blame. Dictators rely on the police to silence opposition, intimidate citizens, and protect their own power. The same officers who once swore to uphold the law are ordered instead to break it — raiding homes at night, detaining activists, and crushing and disappearing dissent. When the regime finally collapses, these officers are left stripped of morale and public trust, carrying the stigma of being instruments of repression. Citizens, scarred by years of abuse, see the police not as protectors but as perpetrators. The result is a vacuum of faith on both sides — a broken relationship between the law enforcers and the people they are meant to serve.
That is why, when we talk about the challenges of rebuilding a state after authoritarian rule, police reform must be one of the first and most urgent priorities. No democracy can stand if its law enforcement remains traumatised, mistrusted, and politically entangled. Reforming the police is not simply about structure or oversight; it is about reimagining the moral foundation of public authority itself.
When the Awami League government finally fell in August 2024, Bangladesh celebrated what many hoped would be a new beginning. For fifteen years, civilians had lived in fear of midnight knocks, arbitrary arrests, and men in uniform who seemed to serve the ruling party more than the public. The end of that era brought a deep sigh of relief. However, it also exposed a painful reality: the police and the citizens no longer trusted eachÌýother.
The wounds of the last summer run deep. During the anti-discrimination movement that began in July 2024, police used rubber bullets, tear gas, and even live ammunition against unarmed students and protesters. Hundreds were injured, and several were killed. When the regime collapsed a few weeks later, furious crowds attacked police stations across the country. By early August, dozens of stations were abandoned, and many officers had fled or gone into hiding. For days, parts of Dhaka, Khulna, and Chattogram had no active law enforcement at all.
Some called this chaos in the police the price of justice. I call it trauma — a shared wound left by years of political control. The police had been used and then abandoned. The people had been silenced, then exploded. That is why reforming Bangladesh’s police is not only about new rules; it is about rebuilding trust, dignity, and confidence on both sides.
Ìý
Reform is a process, not a project
IN OCTOBER 2024, the interim government formed a Police Reform Commission. A nine-member body tasked with investigating what went wrong and drafting recommendations for a new kind of policing. It was a hopeful step, the first real admission that something fundamental had broken. But only a few months later, in February 2025, that hope began to dim. Officials announced a plan to fold the PRC’s work into a new Independent Police Commission. The IPC would handle complaints and accountability, while the PRC would quietly fade away.
It sounded efficient. In truth, it risked turning reform into paperwork. Oversight is necessary, but without a body dedicated solely to learning and reflection, Bangladesh would lose the one platform where challenging questions could be asked and uncomfortable truths faced. Reform is not a task to be completed. It is a conversation that must never end.
Ìý
Lessons from other journeys
OTHER countries have walked this road. South Africa’s story is one of persistence. When apartheid ended in 1994, the new government inherited eleven separate police forces, many notorious for brutality. Reform worked there not because of a single law, but because change became a continuing dialogue. Civilian monitors and community committees meet with police every week to review behaviour and mediate conflicts. It was slow, often chaotic, but it built understanding. In contrast, Georgia’s 2003 ‘Rose Revolution’ produced one of the world’s most dramatic police overhauls, which included new training, new recruitment, and new uniforms. For a while, corruption fell. But by 2012, when political leadership changed, the reforms unravelled. Once the original reform commission was dissolved, politics crept back in.
Even in democratic countries such as South Korea and Taiwan, old habits die hard. After the 1980s transitions, both nations found that police forces remained politically aligned because reforms were treated as one-time events, not continuous commitments.
The lesson for Bangladesh is simple: democracy can open the door to reform, but only patience and persistence can keep it open.
Ìý
Bangladesh’s own wound
OUR story has its own kind of fragility. The events of July and August 2024 left both sides — citizens and police — shaken and scarred. After years of being used as political enforcers, many officers became targets of public anger. In the first week of August, mobs set fire to police buildings in Rajshahi and Sylhet. Reports from local media said more than 700 officers were missing from duty. For a few tense days, Dhaka’s police control rooms were half-empty.
What looked like liberation soon turned into fear. With no one enforcing order, neighbourhoods relied on volunteers and community guards. Civilians realised that freedom without safety is fragile. This breakdown revealed the depth of the divide: the public saw police as symbols of oppression, and police saw the public as hostile. When the system that controlled both sides collapsed, neither knew how to trust the other.
That is the emotional reality any reform must face. New laws cannot erase fear. True reform must first acknowledge pain — the fear that citizens feel when they see a uniform and the shame many officers carry when they remember the orders they once followed. Without healing, even the best policies will fail.
Ìý
Healing the scars of authoritarian policing
DECADES of politicisation have left deep marks on both the police and the public. I call this shared condition — Autocratic PTSD. Within the police, it manifests as blind obedience, the instinct to follow orders without question, and the fear of taking responsibility. Among citizens, it manifests as deep mistrust — the reflex to assume the police will always side with power.
Reform, therefore, must start with citizens, not paperwork. Officers need safe spaces to talk about what they endured — the pressure to act against conscience, the fear of punishment for ddisobedience, andthe exhaustion of being both weapon and scapegoat. Citizens need forums to tell their stories, to voice anger and hurt without retaliation. These dialogues are not decorative; they are essential to restoring humanity on both sides.
Police training must also evolve. For decades, academies emphasised command and punishment. In a democracy, policing must instead be grounded in empathy and ethics. Officers should learn not only how to enforce the law but also how to listen. A good officer is not one who obeys blindly but one who understands the purpose behind every order.
At the same time, police deserve dignity. Promotions and assignments must depend on ability and honesty, not political loyalty. Officers must be free to serve citizens rather than parties. If we want a police service that protects democracy, we must give them the moral and institutional freedom to do so.
Ìý
The debate over ‘streamlining’
WHEN officials announced in February 2025 that the work of the Police Reform Commission would be absorbed into the new Independent Police Commission, many welcomed the decision. Supporters argued that ‘streamlining’ would save resources, avoid duplication, and create a single, more efficient oversight body. They pointed out that Bangladesh, still struggling with inflation and post-crisis recovery, could not afford multiple commissions doing similar work. Some even hoped that merging the two would speed up decision-making and make reform more practical rather than theoretical.
These arguments have some merit. A leaner structure can, in theory, prevent bureaucratic overlap and bring clarity to citizens who often feel lost in the maze of government institutions. For a country rebuilding after political upheaval, efficiency sounds reassuring.
But reform is not a matter of paperwork or convenience — it is a matter of trust. The PRC was never meant to be another layer of bureaucracy; it was meant to be a space for reflection, innovation, and accountability. When its work is buried under a wider administrative umbrella, the risk is not just inefficiency — it is invisibility. The broader the mandate, the easier it becomes for real reform to disappear in the fine print.
Bangladesh has seen this pattern before: committees formed with optimism, only to fade when their findings became politically inconvenient. The PRC’s independence allowed it to ask hard questions — about politicised promotions, partisan commands, and police-community alienation. Folding it into the IPC, whose focus is discipline and complaints, risks turning reform into maintenance. It may make the system look smoother, but it will not make it effective.
True reform takes time and dedicated attention. It cannot survive as a subheading in another agency’s annual report.
Ìý
Signs of progress and the risk of losing momentum
IN THE months after February 2025, the story of police reform in Bangladesh did not end — it began to unfold in new ways. The Police Reform Commission’s 108 recommendations, released in March 2025, called for the very foundations that democracy demands: the depoliticisation of command structures, better training on human rights and gender sensitivity, and stronger community engagement to rebuild public trust. These ideas gave many citizens renewed hope that reform could still be more than rhetoric. Yet progress has been uneven. Human rights groups have noted that while some recommendations — like the introduction of the Police Dress Rules 2025, designed to standardise rank insignia and enhance transparency — were implemented quickly, deeper institutional changes have moved more slowly. Delays in addressing accountability and recruitment issues have already sparked frustration within the force and among citizens who continue to witness sporadic clashes and politically motivated arrests.
Still, not all is stagnant. In June 2025, the government joined UNODC dialogues on criminal justice reform, where Bangladesh’s representatives presented a plan to align national policing standards with international best practices. These exchanges have helped keep reform alive as an ongoing process rather than a forgotten promise.
The real danger now is fatigue. Without steady implementation, reform risks becoming just another report filed away. Bangladesh cannot afford to let that happen. The momentum created in early 2025 must be nurtured through continuous oversight, honest dialogue, and a willingness to confront the very culture that allowed misuse of power to thrive in the first place.
Ìý
Trust and morale must rise together
REFORM will fail if it helps only one side. The public must feel safe enough to seek help, and the police must feel respected enough to provide it. Trust cannot be demanded; it has to be built through small, consistent acts. Imagine every police station hosting monthly meetings with local residents, women, students, traders, day-laborers, to discuss safety and complaints. Such conversations may seem symbolic, but they are where trust begins. The more people talk to police outside moments of crisis, the less alien both sides will feel to each other.
For officers, morale matters as much as accountability. When promotions and recognition are fair, professionalism follows naturally. Many honest officers already exist; they just work in a system that rarely rewards honesty. A young constable should know that integrity, not political connection, is the key to advancement. Once that belief takes root, the culture of fear and favouritism will start to weaken.
Ìý
Keeping reform alive beyond politics
THE hardest part of reform is endurance. Every new government wants to claim success and move on. But the real test of maturity is whether reforms survive the next election. In South Africa, after 1994, reform was deliberately kept outside party politics. Civilian oversight bodies continued their work no matter who governed. Bangladesh should follow that model. The PRC should become a permanent institution, reviewing progress every five years and publishing its findings publicly. Its leadership should be independent, its funding secure, and its voice protected from political retaliation.
Democracy is more than periodic voting. It is the building of institutions that do not collapse when power changes hands. A police force that serves citizens equally, regardless of party, is one of those institutions — and it will not emerge without patient, continuous reform.
Ìý
The road ahead
In 2025, as Bangladesh stands at the beginning of a new political chapter, it faces a simple choice. It can treat police reform as a short-term clean-up — a few new committees, a few reshuffles, and a return to routine. Or it can treat reform as a long, difficult journey that demands patience and humility from everyone involved. The first path is easy and temporary. The second is hard but lasting. We must remember that reform is not only about punishing the guilty; it is about changing the culture that made guilt possible. The police must learn to see citizens not as threats but as partners. And citizens must learn to see the police not as enemies but as fellow victims of the same broken system.
This transformation will take time. For police officers, courage now means questioning the habits they were trained to obey. For citizens, courage means giving the next generation of officers a chance to prove that things can be different. If both sides can take that leap, the cycle of fear can finally begin to fade.
Ìý
A final reflection
REFORMING the police is not about management. It is about memory. It is about remembering what happens when fear replaces fairness and why it must never happen again. Trust is the invisible thread that holds democracy together. Without it, laws are meaningless; with it, even imperfect systems can work.
Bangladesh has an extraordinary opportunity to build that trust from the ground up. But it must do so honestly and patiently. As one South African reformer reflected after apartheid, ‘We changed the law in a year; it will take a generation to change the culture.’ The same may be true for us. As the country prepares for another election amid debates over the July charter and the possible return of exiled leaders, an unreformed police force could easily become a flashpoint once again. Without independent oversight for election security, Bangladesh risks reliving the chaos of 2024 instead of learning from it.
We cannot rebuild overnight what decades of political manipulation have destroyed. But we can begin — slowly, sincerely, and continuously. Police reform must not be an event we celebrate once; it must be the journey that defines who we are becoming. Only then will the police truly move from force to service and the people from fear to trust.
Ìý
Tasnia Symoom is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kentucky and a faculty fellow at the Institute of Mass Atrocity and Genocide Prevention at Binghamton University, New York. Her work focuses on authoritarian regimes, political behaviour, and governance in the Global South.