The New Patrol System (NPS) implemented by the Coimbatore City Police has brought down the response time of the police to emergency and distress calls to around 3.6 minutes. Now the average time taken in 90 per cent of the calls is less than five minutes.
Earlier and conventional patrol systems lacked focus and aim and the response time was close to 10 minutes and even more. City Police Commissioner Amaresh Pujari said while concerted efforts by the police force had ensured reduction in response time, efforts were on to address the deficiencies in distress calls being routed to the control room.
The police had recently held several rounds of talks with the cellular phone operators since calls to the Coimbatore control room emanated from even as far as Tuticorin and Erode. Mr. Pujari said the calls were being streamlined now with the problem being sorted out in the switches of the operators. Only the finishing touches have to be given to the new system, he added.
To ensure instant response to distress calls, seven operators were working at the control room in three shifts to ensure round-the-clock service. Co-ordination between the Law and Order and Crime wings has been ensured now.
Every crime police station has done crime mapping to identify crime hot spots and the chart has been provided to the Law and Order wing whose main duty was to patrol and prevent occurrence of crimes.
Under this system, every station limit has been divided into beats and patrol vehicles assigned specific beats. This helped in police personnel becoming familiar with the area, people, crime hot spots, bad characters and criminal elements besides acquiring knowledge of their modus operandi.
When responsibility was fixed on patrol vehicles, the response time also was short. The beat personnel were keeping tabs on the activities of bad characters and criminal elements, thus bringing down the crime rate. Control room was regularly and constantly updated on details of police vehicles and police personnel. Now the control room located the nearest patrol vehicle in the event of a distress call and diverted it to the crime spot immediately.
Enhanced visibility of the police on the roads also helped in bringing down the incidents of crime substantially now. Mr. Pujari justified his claim by pointing out to the steep fall in the number of chain snatching incidents in the city. The Commissioner also disclosed that four special teams have been constituted at the rate of one each in each sub-division to resolve old, pending and unresolved cases.
Assistant commissioners of crime of particular sub-divisions have been entrusted with the task of resolving the cases and were working under the supervision of the Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime and Traffic).
