City Police Commissioner A.K. Viswanathan has ordered strengthening of night patrolling by roping in nearly 200 police personnel from the Armed Reserve, Home Guards and Law and Order wing.
In addition, a special police team has been constituted to resolve the cases reported recently.
Directive
The directive comes in the wake of two cases of housebreak reported during day and three cases at night, besides two burglary attempts.
Mr. Viswanathan told The Hindu that the additional manpower will be used in all the 15 police stations.
Special teams
In addition, the special teams constituted under the supervision of Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime and Traffic), T. Senthilkumar and led by Assistant Commissioner of Police (Crime East) Ramachandran are entrusted with the task of resolving the cases.
Resolving crime cases not only helped in recovering and restoring the stolen property but also in preventing the recurrence of such crime incidents, Mr.Viswanathan said. He also added that the police have been asked to step up vehicle checks at night.
While promising every possible step such as additional manpower deployment, patrolling and detection, the city's top cop sought the cooperation of the public in insulating the properties.
He urged the public not to discuss their tour plans in public especially to an extent that street vendors, plumbers, electricians, servant maids, painters gain knowledge that the house would remain locked. Public should go in for safe vaults in houses, which the burglars could not break open.
Burglar alarms
In addition, installation of burglar alarms and surveillance cameras are proving to be the need of the hour, he said. In addition, public should desist from leaving the almirah keys at prominent places in the house.
Police personnel on crime prevention and detection duty said that public should desist from having locks which could be prominently seen from the road.
Accumulation of newspapers and milk packets at the doorsteps would become clear indicators about the absence of the inmates.
People should arrange someone to switch on the lights for sometime in the evenings, police personnel said.
Public should come forward to make use of the locked house register in police stations, whenever they go out of station.
This would enable the police to frequently visit the area at night to prevent occurrence of crime.
New system
Mr. Viswanathan also said that the City Police are contemplating on bringing in a system of sending e-mail, or SMS or to call up the police control room to inform the locked house details, whenever people go on a tour.
The e-mail address and the number to which the SMS could be sent would be announced shortly, in addition to the police control room phone number.
The details informed to the police would be brought to the notice of the Commissioner every day. This would help in insulating those houses from incidents of theft or burglary, he said.
