Gurugram police, traffic officials on roads to get body cameras
After traffic police successfully used these cameras for almost two years, now all the 40 police stations across the city will be given a camera each to use while patrolling their respective areas and interacting with people visiting for registering the technical cases.
City police officials and traffic personnel deployed at major traffic intersections across the city will get 200 more body-worn cameras to ensure fair, transparent investigation and enforce traffic rules and road safety.
The police said this equipment are imported from the United Kingdom and has a two-inch front-facing rotatable camera with wide-view lens. They are attached on the policemen’s uniform and capture both video and audio.
After traffic police successfully used these cameras for almost two years, now all the 40 police stations across the city will be given a camera each to use while patrolling their respective areas and interacting with people visiting for registering the technical cases.
At least 250 police personnel will be equipped with body cameras by March next year, said the police adding that the entire exchange between a traffic official and an offender will now be video-recorded in a camera which will be attached to the uniform of the traffic official.
The footage will be transferred to a hard drive each week so that there is a complete backup of each camera.
Presently the department has just 50 such cameras which are mostly used by the traffic police.
KK Rao, commissioner of police, said a job of a traffic official is the most challenging one. Whenever he get hold of an offender, the person either claims to be a kin of a bureaucrat or that of a politician. “It was seen in the past that offenders had alleged bribery charges against the officials when they had asked to stop after caught driving without seat belt, or being on call while driving or jumping a red light. People used to abuse them and often claimed they were framed as there was no evidence,” said Rao.
The police said that these cameras will bring transparency in the system and will also ensure no that official lands in any kind of altercation. “Anyone involved in slapping false charges, would be caught and strict action will be taken against the person,” said Rao.
The cameras have an internal memory of 32 GB. A screen allows the police officer to playback videos to show the violators when he alleged false charges on him. It is not possible to delete or overwrite footage or distribute videos in the camera as the device is encrypted, said the police.
Weighing less than 150 grams, the cameras are equipped with storage up to 10 hours. Video and audio recordings have date and time stamp, tamper-proof digital fingerprint and encryption facility.
All 250 police personnel deployed in the traffic police force and 80 officers from police stations, including the station house officers, will be provided with this device.
The 50 traffic personnel underwent a week’s training this year before using these cameras. They have to fix it to their uniforms during their eight-hour shift.
Rao said the cameras given to traffic personnel were delivering good results and there have been instances where the altercation was averted due to the presence of cameras. “We randomly monitor footage from the cameras. Apart from the traffic police in Sector 29 and DLF Phase-2 police stations were using them until now,” said Rao.
Traffic police were given 15 cameras in November 2016 for better functioning and monitoring of traffic-related issues.
In 2018,the Gurugram police penalised 117,202 motorists and collected ₹23.40 crore from traffic violators.