Tiruppur City Police on Wednesday introduced ‘E-Beat App’, a mobile application aimed at digitalising and improving beat patrolling.
The app offers a QR code-based scanning facility which replaces the old system of police personnel making entry in ‘patta’ books kept at the beats or areas they cover during patrols.
Police Commissioner V. Vanitha launched the initiative in the presence Deputy Commissioners S. Aravind (law and order) and P. Ravi (crime and traffic).
According to the Commissioner, there are 23 patrol beats in the jurisdictions of the eight law and order police stations in Tiruppur city. Each beat will have two police personnel on patrol in shifts round-the-clock.
Earlier, the police personnel had to make entry in the ‘patta’ books while visiting the beats. Now, QR codes have been fixed at 629 important locations in the 23 beats. These locations include banks, ATMs, commercial complexes, places of worship, residences of important persons and residences of senior citizens, said Ms. Vanitha.
As the application uses the GPS location of the mobile phone of the user, the location of the police personnel on patrol duty can be tracked easily. The live location of the devices enables the police control room to depute the police personnel who are nearest to a place of occurrence in case of an emergency.
The E-Beat App also has provision to upload photos on incidents like law and order tension or accidents to alert the control room.
According to Ms. Vanitha, the existing surveillance cameras in Tiruppur city have been integrated with the app. The government has issued an order for the installation of 1,200 surveillance cameras in the city, she said.
For the use of the public, banners mentioning the numbers of the police personnel on patrols have been erected at all the patrol beats.