Dubai: Lieutenant Colonel Ahmad Mesh'ara joined the police in 1968 as he considered it an opportunity to serve the country.
For the first three years he worked in the traffic department, reporting accidents and issuing fines.
Muraqqabat Police station was previously situated where the traffic department currently is and it only had five police patrols. "Back in these days we had a maximum of three to four minor accidents a day. Nowadays it's an accident every couple of minutes," he said with a surge of laughter.
"We were mainly responsible [for] regulating the flow of traffic and issuing fines, which were mainly [for] driving without a licence or without a number plate on the vehicle. Many people at the time drove at a young age and without licences, so we worked on curbing that," he said.
Back then fines were issued in Gulf rupees — the UAE currency had not yet been implemented in the 1960s.
Mesh'ara, who through dedication and hard work is now a lieutenant colonel in the Department of Operations. He has been in this department for over 39 years and remembers that once the only mode of communication was through walkie-talkie devices.
Going hi-tech
Now the department has significantly developed to include hi-tech equipment.
"We were a handful of officers in a small room with no air-conditioning. Back then we only had fans," Mesh'ara said.
The new department is considered state-of-the-art and consists of nine sections, each dedicated to dealing with specific tasks, like general inquiries, emergency calls, traffic control and crimes. The department has over 40 TV screens which can show photos of wanted persons, newsreels and three-dimensional maps.
Currently Mesh'ara supervises the duty officer section, which handles various police reports, such as accidents, robberies and other crimes. He has handled many reports during his more than 40 years of service and feels honoured to be part of the police force under the leadership of Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, chief of Dubai Police.
