Madurai
Substantial increase in usage of technological support for policing is the need of the hour in the wake of increasing challenges and shortage of manpower in the police department, said Commissioner of Police S. Davidson Devasirvatham.
Addressing at the 3rd executive committee meeting of Tamil Nadu Chamber of Commerce and Industry here on Tuesday, Mr. Devasirvatham said that the city was bound for further expansion.
Stating that Thoppur where AIIMS is all set to come up and Madurai Airport are likely to come under Madurai city police limits, he said policing will become more challenging with increasing population and shortage of manpower.
“We have proposed newer police stations with increased manpower. A new police station for Madurai Bench of Madras High Court has been sanctioned,” he said.
Stating that most of the accused involved in criminal cases like robbery, chain snatching and murders were newer and younger persons, he said keeping a tab on all of them with physical presence of police was impossible.
“Using of technology like fixing surveillance cameras will solve this problem,” he said. He said that the city police have planned to cover 150 identified junctions with closed-circuit television cameras.
“Wherever such networks have been put up in recent times, residents were saying that crimes have come down,” he said.
The police have decided to put up internet protocol cameras for the CCTV networks that would be linked with jurisdictional police stations for real-time monitoring and also for detection of crimes.
“We intend to use facial recognition solutions that would alert the police about the movement of any criminal whose face is read by any camera. This will reduce the burden of physical policing,” he said.
He said that with increasing salary burden for the Government, only technology will provide the solution in better policing.
Senior president S. Rethinavelu, president, N. Jegadeesan, secretary J. Selvam, and Managing Director of TVS, Madurai, R. Haresh, were among those who were present.