Chandigarh Police has started three citizen centric services in the City Beautiful. These include the Emergency Response Support System (ERSS – Dial 112), ‘E-Beat Book’ System and the ‘E-Saathi App’. According to police officers, these services would effectively reduce the response time of police to address the distress calls of the public and strengthen the police-public interface endeavour of community policing.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while launching these services in a formal function, observed that the beat officer system has been the cornerstone of the Indian Policing system for ages and through such Citizen Centric Services, a SMART Police force can be built in the country. He congratulated Chandigarh Police to have taken a lead in introducing such Citizen Centric Services in Policing.
According to a press release ERSS is one of the key projects of the Home Ministry under Nirbhaya Fund. It has been designed to play a pivotal role in mitigation or preventing escalation of crime, especially against women and children. ERSS provides a single emergency number (112), computer aided dispatch of field resources to the location of distress. Citizens can send their emergency information through call, sms, email and through the 112 India mobile app.
The ‘Dial 112’ emergency response service is an initiative to strengthen proactive community policing that would end confusion amongst distress callers, who at times end up dialling 100 in fire or medical emergency cases. Till now, there were more than 20 numbers that were running for the help of public for various emergency situations, which were creating confusion to the distress callers.But after starting this service, public will not face these problems. In future, the Emergency Number for Road Accidents (1073), Women Helpline (1091, 181), Child Help Line (1098), including other Helpline services would be added under the 112 unified emergency response number.
The ‘E-Beat Book’ is a web and mobile based application which will ease the collection, updation and analysis of the information related to crime and criminals in a real time. Chandigarh has been divided in 54 divisions. In each division, there is one ‘Atal Sehbhagita Kendra’ that is under the supervision of a Beat Officer, having an Android Mobile Phone to use the app. ” The E-Beat Book would be linked with Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS), which would help in a real time updation of crime/criminal data. The citizen can directly approach the‘Atal Sehbhagita Kendra’ for redressal of their grievances and can render their suggestions too,”said in press release.
The ‘E-Saathi’ App would help the general public, to remain in touch with the police and also give suggestions to facilitate participative community policing ‘Your Police at Your Doorstep’ initiative. The beat officer would be able to provide services like passport verification, tenant verification, servant verification, character certification etc. at a click of a button through the app, without the people needing to visit the police station.With this initiative, on one hand, where the beat officer would become more efficient in his/her working, this would make police-people communication a two-way process, on the other.
According to police officers, these services would effectively reduce the response time of police to address the distress calls of the public and strengthen the police-public interface endavour of community policing.
