Face detection cameras (FDCs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) helped police recognise ‘known accused’ in the milling crowd and regulate crowd and vehicle movements during Thevar jayanthi at Pasumpon in the district on Monday, Superintendent of Police Omprakash Meena has said.
Heaving a sigh of relief that the ‘communally sensitive’ three-day event passed off peacefully, the SP said here on Tuesday that after deploying 8,000 personnel, the police also relied on digital eyes, which were of great help to them.
For the first time, the police used the FDCs, developed to instantly identity known accused and the system helped the police recognise accused, who mingled with the crowd and indulged or attempted to indulge in criminal activities, the SP said.
Photographs of nearly 3,000 known accused from south zone were fed into the system and when some of them visited Pasumpon, the eight face detection cameras captured their images and alerted the control room after the software matched more than 160 parameters of them in less than a minute.
The SP deployed a 40-member special squad in plain clothes, headed by a Sub-Inspector, which remained in touch with the special control room. Soon after recognising a known accused, the control room would alert the squad, giving details of the person and his location, and the squad members would nab him, all within a couple of minutes, Mr. Meena said.
The control room identified 70-odd known accused and alerted the squad, the SP said, adding at least four accused were caught red-handed while pocket-picking. In a few other cases, the accused were caught and let off after enquiry, he said.
An UAV with a ‘30X zoom camera’ captured images in a radius of five km around Pasumpon and this helped the police regulate vehicle movement during VIP visits, he said.
Mr. Meena said some in the crowd, especially youths, behaved unruly, travelling on rooftops of speeding vehicles, booed and teased the police, but the police exercised restraint. After reviewing the footages of CCTV cameras, the police would register cases against all those who violated police orders, he added.
