The history of police training in Assam has completed a glorious 77 years. It was at Salonibari near Tezpur that the first training centre of the Assam Police was established in 1948. It was shifted to Dergaon in April 1949, to a site that used to be an airfield of the Air Transport Command of the Allied Forces during the Second World War. It was from that airfield that aircraft of the 3rd Combat Cargo of the Allied Forces operated, airlifting, among other items, gasoline and pipes to Myanmar. A Second World War ATC tower is still preserved inside the Police Academy as a memory. There was a time when police personnel of various ranks from all over the region were sent to Dergaon. But, with the establishment of the North-East Police Academy near Shillong (Meghalaya), the importance of Dergaon had somewhat diminished, until the Government of Assam decided to upgrade it to what is now called Lachit Barphukan Police Academy. While the Academy had started operating during the previous BJP-led government headed by Sarbananda Sonowal, the present regime headed by Himanta Biswa Sarma has further upgraded it, with the Union Home Minister Amit Shah formally inaugurating it on Saturday. Very few people know that Assam Police is probably the only police force in the country that had taken part in the Second World War. It was actually the Assam Rifles, which was then under the administrative control of the Assam Police, which had taken part directly in the war, thus enriching the history and heritage of the Assam Police. Training is the most essential component of a police force, and continued in-service training is a must, especially in a state that is located at the heart of a strategic region. Apart from training in arms, combat, and handling emergency situations like riots and civil strife, a police force also has the responsibility of assuring the citizens that they are safe because of an efficient police force. Assam Police, fortunately, has a tremendously positive public image, one which has been built over several decades of hard work and experience. It is a fact that the Assam Police had a tough time handling insurgency and armed militancy situations. But then, in retrospect, one can say that though the Army had been deployed for a long time, since November 1990, to tackle insurgency, it was finally the Assam Police that had contributed immensely towards the restoration of normalcy and helping the society to push out insurgency from the ground.