Chennai City police eye mobile CCTV units

While there is an ongoing drive to urge residents and commercial units to install CCTV system in their premises to cover the roads, the mobile CCTV units would help police monitor procession, protests and public meetings in a better way. 

“The CCTV surveillance system is essential to monitor the movement of the public and the flow of traffic during a bandobust period. The real-time video streaming to the CCTV control room will be useful for the supervising officer to observe the situation and issue orders accordingly. The footage stored in the control room video recorder will be used for post data analysis. Each unit will be connected to hard disks of 4TB capacity. If something untoward takes place, the footage will help to find out the real cause and identify the miscreants if any,” said police sources. 

Currently, several police personnel are deployed for bandobust duty. The CCTV system is expected to bring down the manpower required for such activities. Also, the senior officers can monitor the situation from the control room in their offices.

While the City Police Commissioner had earlier announced that the entire city would be covered by CCTV surveillance by September end, the deadline has been unofficially extended to December to all the police stations. “Commissioner is getting daily updates from all stations about the progress they have been making and each police station is working towards achieving their target,” said a senior officer. This is apart from the CCTV system with more than 1,700 cameras to be installed and managed by the Police Department. 

The officer added that they were expecting financial support under Nirbhaya Fund of the Centre by September, with which CCTVs would be installed at all the public places where people congregate in large numbers. “The idea is to ensure the safety of women and places like Marina beach will also be covered in the drive. By December, you can call Chennai a CCTV city,” the officer added. 

Conviction rate to go up

While detection of crime will be an immediate result of CCTV surveillance, police expect that it would help them to speed up the trial in the court and increase the conviction rate. “Actual CCTV footage of crimes will play a major role in the trial as it is a fool-proof evidence, the conviction rate will definitely go up in the coming years,” added a police source.