Time to add police to friends list

CHENNAI: Looking to make a new friend during the lockdown? How about the Tamil Nadu police.The days of meeting people in cafes or other hangout spots is a thing of the past. Now, we make friends on social media platforms and the men and women in khakis have become quite popular in these platforms, at least on Facebook. The Tamil Nadu police will soon join Twitter and Instagram, where you can get authentic information, say police officers. Officers meanwhile say that they are using the medium to combat fake news.

“During the lockdown our followers in Facebook doubled from 1.05 lakh in January to 3.1 lakh in June. We get queries everyday regarding rules for transportation, e-pass and so on. We take pains to answer them all,” says V Vikraman, SP (Automation).The officers not only answer queries but even send updates on action taken against corrupt personnel.“Since it is quite common to come across hate and spiteful meassages on the social media platforms, we thought why not use it to provide authentic information,” says Vikraman.

The social media cell was launched in 2017 by ADGP (Admin) P Kandasamy, the brain behind creating cyber crime cells in the districts and bringing CUG numbers for police personnel.The Tamil Nadu police social media cell has a common WhatsApp number with 15,000 people in their broadcast list. All one has to do is send ‘JOIN’ to 9498111191 and start receiving regular updates and government orders directly. Since there is a limit to creating contacts, the police has approached WhatsApp for more space so that more people can be added.

“We focus not only on police work. Once we received a video from a person who had filmed a police personnel accepting bribe from a sand-laden truck. We immediately informed the concerned senior police officer and after that the personnel accepting bribe was suspended. We later sent the information about the suspension to the person who uploaded the video,” said SP Vikraman.The social media team consists of 10 personnel and is headed by Sub-inspector S Santhalakshmi, who like many others did not know anything about video editing or voice overs.

“We were trained on technical jargons. Then we started making short films, posters and began writing scripts for shooting the videos. If any local festival or important events are held, we are there to cover it from the ground. We edit the videos along with the interviews and upload them,” said Santhalakshmi.

Talking about her experience during the Covid-19 lockdown, Santhalakshmi said that a migrant worker who was stuck in a remote village in the State contacted them through Whatsapp, seeking immediate help. “We got his location through the message and sent a police team to help the man and others like him. Later, they were sent home,” Santhalakshmi said. Now the team is expanding its wings to other districts as well recruiting interested personnel and providing them training.

“It’s always better to hear it from the horse’s mouth. Instead of scrolling through numerous sites to find authentic information one can go through our social media handles for any information,” said SP Vikraman. Meanwhile, some district police have their own social media pages where they communicate with the public through memes.

Follow Tamil Nadu police on YouTube, Facebook and Dailyhunt for more information.