The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Traffic police to be given mobile phone cameras

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Wednesday, Nov 19, 2008
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Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Traffic police to be given mobile phone cameras

G. Anand

To garner proof against those riding without helmets

Photo: C. Ratheesh Kumar

Marching forward: Director General of Police Raman Sreevastava explaining the working of the newly-installed police video surveillance network to Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan in front of the ‘video display wall’ at the Control Room in the city on Tuesday. —

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Traffic policemen in major cities will be given camera-equipped mobile telephones mainly to garner proof against those riding two-wheelers without wearing helmets.

Inspector General of Police, Headquarters, Loknath Behra, said traffic enforcers would transmit these images as multi-media messages to their respective police control rooms where it would be stored as evidence for ensuing prosecution. They would also capture the images of those driving cars without fastening seat belts.

The police hoped the method would help them contest accusations that traffic enforcers were acting arbitrarily against motorists. The photographs, with proof of the time and location they were taken, would be furnished as evidence to motorists if they felt the police had charged them wrongly.

Video surveillance

The police are planning to bring all major centres and main thoroughfares in the city under video surveillance. Surveillance cameras, mounted on pivots and controllable from the City Police Control Room, have already been installed at five points in the city. The cameras have night vision and zooming capabilities. An alarm system has been linked to the cameras to alert the police if anybody attempted to sabotage the devices or cut the lines which linked them to the Control Room.

The video feed from the cameras will be projected real time on an array of display screens at the facility and it will be stored digitally for future reference.

The Control Room has been modernised to drastically reduce the police response time to distress calls from citizens. The newly-installed automated dial 100 system will display the address and subscriber details of the distress caller on a computer screen the moment he or she connects to the Control Room from a landline. The police will be able to direct any one of its 16 new mobile patrol vans equipped with Global Navigation Satellite system (GPS) and the latest Terrestrial Trunked Radio Network (TETRA) to the spot promptly.

The GPS system enables Control Room officials know (real time) the location of its patrol vehicles on a digital map of the city.

The subscriber details of citizens who call the Control Room from mobile phones will also be known to the police, though it will be difficult to immediately triangulate their position. Such expensive technologies will be added on to the existing infrastructure in the future.

The Control Room can handle 32 calls simultaneously. The police are also digitalising the maps of 430 police station areas in the State.

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