Very soon, the Madurai Commissioner of Police will be able to see visuals of any trouble-torn area in the city sitting in his chamber through a huge closed-circuit television network and give commands to his officers and men to bring the area under control. The city police have made a proposal to Director General of Police Ashok Kumar for a State-level pilot project to be implemented under the aegis of Bureau of Police Research and Development. The proposal includes networking of 500 CCTV cameras with fibre-optic cable that could beam live all important junctions, crowded places, arterial roads and vital installations.
The proposal which is at a nascent stage, if approved, would give Madurai city the biggest CCTV network of State police. At present, the city police have a network of 16 CCTV cameras that are primarily used to monitor traffic movement at important junctions. The number of cameras was very limited and so was their utility, Commissioner of Police Shailesh Kumar Yadav told reporters here on Tuesday.
“Monitoring of other CCTV camera networks in various locations is localised and top officials do not get to see visuals of those networks. Similar is the case with the public address systems put in several locations,” he said.
The highlight of the new system is that it will be a composite plan along with a unified command across the city for emergency responses. “In normal times, it will help monitoring the city. Besides managing traffic and crowd control during festival times, the system will provide command and control enabling better administration, wherein the Commissioner could give instructions to the officers for immediate response at times of emergencies,” he added. With so many cameras, it could also help in keeping a tab on the movement on antisocial elements, Mr. Yadav said.
