Hi-tech police response system in 3 cities soon

Hi-tech police response system in 3 cities soon

A Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) set fitted on one of the new police control room vehicles. Messages from the control room will be displayed on theArjun Raghunath | ENS09 Sep 2008 03:13:00 AM ISTTHIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With hopes of reducing the response time of the police to the grievance call by the public, the Kerala Police is all set to launch a Global Positioning System (GPS)-enabled control room system in the three major cities.

Conceived on the lines with the police control rooms in foreign countries, the new system comprises control room vehicles equipped with global positioning system and control rooms embedded to global information systems.

Developed at a cost of more than Rs 2 crore, the new system would be introduced in Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode cities within a couple of months.

"The work on the system is almost complete and it has also been tested successfully. Certain equipment for the system has to be brought from the US and hence a slight delay in launching it, " said IG (Headquarters) Loknath Behera.

Express had earlier reported that the Police Department had submitted the project for the state government’s nod. There would be 18 vehicles each for Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi control rooms and 14 for Kozhikode.

The training to police officials on the new system is progressing. Technical support for the project is provided by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing.

"At present the average response time of the police is around ten minutes.

We hope to bring it down to around five minutes with the new system, " said Behera.

In the new system, as soon as a call is received at the police control room, the details of the telephone subscriber would be displayed on a monitor. The police official who attends the call will enter the message on the system. Using the details of the phone from which the call came, the system will locate the control room vehicle near the spot through the global positioning system.

The movement of the control room vehicles will be displayed on a nine feet-wide and six-feet tall screen in the control room. A digital map of the city will be embedded with the system. The message entered at the control room will be simultaneously displayed on a monitor in the control room vehicle.

The message would also be transmitted from the control room to the vehicles in audio format.

Behera said that the new system would also be helpful to monitor whether there are any lapses in duty on the part of the control room vehicles.

Moreover, it would also be helpful in preventing hoax calls to some extent as the location of the phone from which the call originates could be located at once.

The new system is using Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) signals that provide better coverage, besides several other technical advantages, Behera said.