Madurai City Police on Tuesday introduced ‘e-beat system’ that would help officials monitor with their mobile phones whether police personnel are making their routine rounds.
Commissioner of Police Prem Anand Sinha said the new system was only to leverage technological advancement in replacing patta passbooks with QR code stickers. Under conventional policing method, all personnel were given the task of visiting important spots in their jurisdictions during routine rounds.
To check their compliance with the duty routine, patta passbooks are kept at banks, ATMs, markets and crime-prone areas, in which the police personnel have to sign and mention the time of their visit.
“Often it becomes a big task for Station House Officers to go to those places and check entries in the patta passbook. Besides, there are possibilities of some police personnel making entries in a short span of time without making routine rounds,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) R. Shiva Prasad.
Software for the new system has been uploaded in the mobile phones of all police personnel. All that they need to do is to scan the QR codes in their respective jurisdictions. The global positioning system-enabled technology will identify each spot with the GPS coordinates.
“Officials above the rank of Inspector will be able to check the data in their phones that would provide the details of police personnel visiting each location with the time of their visits,” Mr. Sinha said.
The system gives real-time data. The Commissioner said the system was fool-proof as it gave the exact times and locations of police personnel while uploading scanned images of QR codes.
Mr. Sinha said the police were planning to encourage city residents to use locked door registers to inform them before going out of station. “We will have separate QR codes for each house and additional beats would be introduced for the police to keep a tab on those locked houses,” he added.
The Commissioner also flagged off renovated four-wheeler and two-wheeler patrol vehicles carrying sirens and flash lights to increase visible policing.
Deputy Commissioners K. Palanikumar (Crime), K. Sugumaran (Traffic) and Baskaran (Headquarters) were present.
