Police dept launches drone initiative to improve response time

Gandhinagar: The state police on Friday launched GP-DRASTI – a project that uses drones to reduce response time. The initiative aims to strengthen the state's security by improving the speed and effectiveness of police response.
An official statement quoting director general of police (DGP) Vikas Sahay said that the quality and speed of police response are crucial when an incident occurs. Currently, PCR vans are used, but they take time to reach the scene. To address this, the police decided to incorporate drones, which can arrive at the scene in less than half the time it takes for PCR vans, in some cases within about two minutes of being intimated of the incident.
Providing information about the project, the statement said that when an incident is reported to the police control room, both the PCR van and the drone base station will be notified. The drones will provide real-time footage to base station officers, allowing for immediate assessment of the situation's severity and the planning of necessary police actions.
The use of drones to reach the site of an incident was conducted as a pilot project in Ahmedabad and Surat, where drones proved significantly faster. The statement said that the police dept has begun purchasing more drones. Initially, 33 police stations in Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, and Rajkot with higher crime rates will implement this system. A six-day training session has been organised at Karai to facilitate the project's rollout, starting with eight police stations in Ahmedabad and expanding to other cities as more drones become available, the statement added.