MANGALORE: The media and netizens in Dakshina Kannada are going to have another channel of communication with the district police office. Thanks to an initiative taken by B. Dayananda, Superintendent of Police, the police here have drawn up plans to re-launch their website with interactive features.

Mr. Dayananda told The Hindu that the website of the Dakshina Kannada police is crammed with a lot of information which is of no use to people. The website will be made more user-friendly with information relevant to the public, he said.

He said the first beneficiary of the revamped website will be the media. "The media is active in the district. It will be our endeavour to provide authentic information to you (the media) on aspects such as crimes, detection of crimes, and traffic-related offences through the website on real-time basis.''

Mr. Dayanand said the website will be revamped in phases. Information about the jurisdictional limits of police stations will be given in the website. "Often, people are at a loss as to which police station they should approach for routine matters. The website will help them out,'' he said. ``It will also have a search option, which will give people access to contact numbers of police functionaries in the district. This will enable them to get in touch with the police officer concerned and have their query answered or problem attended to," Mr. Dayanand said.

Another purpose of the new website will be to help people of local origin who are settled in other States or countries to keep abreast of local developments related to the Police Department.

He said the website can also be used by policemen in the district to keep their seniors abreast of developments in their respective jurisdictions. "Although we have intranet, we plan to have departmental information on the net to provide restricted access to identified users. This will enable officers to access information whenever they want," he added.

Police stations in taluks can use the web to provide photographs of accident and crime-related scenes. Since most stations have photo-scanners, they can scan and upload photographs. In the future, they will also be able to upload digital photo images.

Mr. Dayanand admitted that training police personnel in web-hosting and web-designing will be one of the primary tasks to be addressed before the initiative can take off. For the website to become popular, it should be updated regularly, he said. "We will have an in-house team which will be trained. Outsourcing is not possible because of the sensitivities involved," he added. He said the department is looking for sponsors for the venture.

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