City police to emulate London cops in control room response

To adopt tech for reducing action time to 15 minutes

The Bengaluru  police will go the London police way and upgrade the dial ‘100’ control room system for quickest response. During a recent visit to London, city police commissioner Praveen Sood obtained information from the London police about the use of technology in control rooms for quickest response.

The police have obtained Rs 20 crore funding under the mega city plan and procured equipment. The new control room will be up and running in about 45 days. Once operational, Bengaluru will become the first South Indian city to have upgraded control room. Currently, the system is functional in Jaipur and Delhi in India. The response time for reaching the spot in London is 15 minutes, while it is 25 minutes in Bengaluru. After upgrading, the police hope to set 15 minutes as response time.

There are only 15 lines in the control room for over one crore population in the city. Often blank calls, mysterious calls and calls seeking information are received. Hence, lines are always engaged or much time is taken to attend calls.

More lines
“We will shortly add 100 lines in two months. We have set 15 seconds to attend a call, one minute for dispatch section and 15 minutes for vehicle to be dispatched,” Sood told DH. The dispatch section decides if a vehicle needs be sent or the intervention of police inspectors, ACPs or DCPs is needed. Hence, one-minute deadline is set for the section, he said. In London, there are 80 desks at the control room to answer in 80 languages. Bengaluru police propose to set up three language desks.

“We will set up regional language desks in addition to Kannada, English and Hindi,” Sood added. The police are yet to take a call on which regional languages should be selected. The new system has a feedback mechanism to ascertain if the staff satisfactorily answered a call. For missed calls, the staff will call back to get information.

The police will shortly add 679 CCTV cameras with analysis and scanning facility across the city. The cameras will be connected to the control room. The staff automatically get footage from cameras installed in nearby areas from where calls originate. This helps the control room study the situation and take a decision. “We have invited tenders to outsource the initiative. About 350 civilians will be recruited for the control room as we don’t want to waste police resources,” Sood said.