To give the police department an edge over law breakers, the police in Kerala's Kannur district now have two CCTV cameras installed in police jeeps.
Implemented around two weeks ago, they are still in the process of installing the cameras in all the vehicles. The jeeps will have two cameras—one at the front and another at the rear end of the vehicle.
At present, all the 10 police stations under the jurisdiction of Iritty DySP have to install the CCTVs. More than half of them have already installed the cameras, DySP Prajeesh told TNM.
Speaking of how the department came about installing the cameras, DySP said, "There is no compulsory order. It is only a suggestion to increase our chances of solving cases. Be it snatching or accidents or instances of political violence, it is often challenging to identify the accused, especially when there is a mob of more than 100 people or so. By installing CCTVs in all our moving vehicles, we can increase the chances of identifying the accused, thereby increasing our chances of solving the crime. Through this, we also believe that we can prevent crimes since people will know that they cannot escape us."
The senior police officer said that while static CCTVs at several places have helped the police nab accused in many cases including murder, theft, etc, it was only recently that they thought about installing them on moving vehicles.
"During one of our sub-division conferences, one of the police personnel suggested this idea and we all agreed that it was a good initiative. We depend on scientific evidence to solve cases and CCTV visuals are definitely going to help us," he said.
While this is not a compulsory order from the department, all the stations under the Iritty DySP's jurisdiction will implement it, having realised its usefulness.
Mattannur CI John AV said that the cameras can automatically save visuals up to 10 days, following which, they have to save the visuals to an external drive.
"There was also a directive that we should video record proceedings of vehicle checks. With this, we can also implement that directive," the Circle-Inspector said.