Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Police to monitor pay phones

Thiruvananthapuram: In a bid to check scaremongers who use pay phones to make bomb threats, the police will ask those who keep coin operated public phones on their premises to register themselves at the local police station.

Inspector General of Police, Thiruvananthapuram Range, Arun Kumar Sinha said the “wave of hoax calls” in the past few days were mainly from pranksters using public phones.

One called the Police Control Room on Tuesday and threatened to bomb some schools in the city. Another said a bomb had been placed in a crowded shopping mall. The anti-sabotage team had a tiring day responding to the threats. Mr. Sinha said telephone booth operators and franchises of pay phone companies would be sensitised about the State’s security concerns. They would be asked to record the identity of phone users.

City Police Commissioner Ravada Azad Chandrasekhar said Sub Inspectors would create a list of pay phones in their respective areas of jurisdiction. The police asked Internet café owners to allow web access only to those who furnished authentic identity cards.

The police would soon get 10 more sniffer dogs trained to detect explosives. The city police have only four dogs now, of which two are trained for tracking suspects.

The police are also planning 24-hour real time video surveillance of 22 locations in the city using latest pivot mounted digital cameras. The cameras would cover important bus stands, railway stations and commercial areas. Patrol vehicles would be equipped with Global Positioning Systems.

Mr. Chandrasekhar said the police might go in for a Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) network. The TETRA is a mobile radio platform which combines the features of cellular mobile telephones and conventional wireless communication in a single device.

TETRA enables various methods of electronic data transfer, enabling officers on the field to quickly access crime records, images and fingerprints from the computerised database of the Police Department.

The network is reportedly more secure and easy to use than the conventional wireless network of the State police. Person-to-person calls and conferencing are possible without compromising privacy. Confidential calls or data transfer could be digitally encrypted.

Images and information of missing persons, suspects and stolen vehicles could be sent as digital data to field officers wielding TETRA handsets without disrupting voice communication.

TETRA handsets have ambience listening facility enabling “silent” communication with the base station without persons in the vicinity knowing that the set is switched on. The devices could be used for secret surveillance and sting operations.

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