To detect the increasing number of house break-in cases in the city, the police are in the process of forming a team of experts to work on these cases. The team will be finalised by Police Commissioner A. Amalraj in a couple of days and will become fully operational before the end of this week.
The decision to form the team was taken at a meeting with all the Assistant Commissioners (Crime) in the city chaired by the Deputy Commissioner (Law and Order, in-charge of Crime) S. Lakshmi, on Wednesday.
20 unresolved cases
“There are 20 unresolved house break-in cases in the city from the beginning of this year. Though respective police stations are working on these cases, they are unable to focus on particular cases,” she said.
The Deputy Commissioner told The Hindu that to enable a team to focus on specific cases they have taken the first step to form a team to detect house break-in cases. It will be an eight-member team headed by an Inspector and will be directly under the control of the top city police officers.
Assistant Commissioners have been asked to identify experts in probing this mode of crime and come out with a list on Thursday. The best among them will be handpicked for the special team. Members of this team will not be involved in other investigations. “The team will be provided with a comprehensive list of criminals involved in such cases and they will follow ex-convicts and the jail release list,” she added.
On studying the performance of the team of rate of success the police plan to form more such niche specific special teams to work on other forms of crimes – such as chain snatchings and mobile phone thefts.
As part of the crime prevention aspects, the police have decided to increase number of beats that are on night patrol in the three police stations – Saravanampatti, Singanallur and Peelamedu – in the East Sub Divisions. Police sources said that by increasing the beats patrolling officers will have to cover lesser area and this helps in covering more areas.
Ms. Lakshmi said that this was following an increase in number of house break-ins reported in the East Sub Division, especially in Saravanampatti area in a week’s time. “Most of the incidents were in houses where residents had gone out of town,” she said and made an appeal to residents going out of town to inform respective police stations on it. “The police will check those houses,” she added.
