Chennai: Cops collect Rs 6.5 crore fines in 50 days

CHENNAI: Alert citizens tipping off the city police about traffic violations has resulted in the police collecting 6.5crore as fines in the past 50 days.
“The number of complaints almost doubled from 410 to 850 after the social media unit of the traffic police was revived by commissioner Shankar Jiwal on March 1,” said an officer who monitors social media.
A team led by an assistant commissioner works out of the police commissionerate monitoring and responding to complainants that flood the Twitter handles @ChennaiTraffic and @chennaipolice. The traffic police WhatsApp numbers also get a lot of complaints.
Of the 6.50 crore fine amount collected, 1.19 crore came from 1,181 people fined for drunken driving. A least 67 vehicles were involved in more than 100 violations. “The police identified them while stopping these violators randomly at vehicle checkpoints,” said a police officer.
The traffic police said they had collected the entire fine amount from the violators. “Twelve police call centres are effectively collecting the penalties,” said additional commissioner Kapilkumar C Saratkar.
Saratkar said the police try to address complaints within 24 hours, but sometimes it can take longer. Once the problem is solved, photographs of the location are taken and the person who raised the issue is tagged.
“In case of vehicles abandoned on the streets, we contact the owner tracing him or her using the registration number. Sometimes we cannot trace the owner as the vehicle has changed hands several times or because the owner is unresponsive. In such cases, we try to dispose of the vehicles to a yard or an empty space until further action,” said Saratkar.
From March 20 to June 3, the Twitter handle of Chennai traffic police received 444 complaints and action was taken in 429 cases. Of complaints received through WhatsApp, the police had taken action on 491 of the 511 cases. The traffic police got 104 complaints on their mobile app and resolved 103 cases.