Bengaluru citizens can now live stream crimes to city cops for quick action

In a first in India, the Bengaluru police introduced reporting crime and traffic violation on Periscope, a live video-streaming service of Twitter

Citizens of Bengaluru can now live stream a crime or a traffic violation to the top cop of India’s tech city.

In a first-of-its-kind initiative in India, the Bengaluru police on Saturday introduced reporting crime and traffic violation on Periscope, a live video-streaming service of Twitter. The Police Commissioner M N Reddi believes citizen participation will curb violations and crime in the city.

Bengaluru, home to large number of technology companies, research institutions and startups has the highest density of vehicles in the country - 53.92 lakh vehicles for a population of 84.25 lakhs.

In 2014, the police booked 74.36 lakh violations or every vehicle booked 1.4 times for violations. Bengaluru’s population, according to the 2011 census is 84.25 lakh

“Our aim is to encourage people to be proactive  in reporting violations,” said Reddi.

The police also have launched initiatives that encourage people to collaborate to tackle crime, he said.

Twitter users can tweet the videos to ensure attention of the police force in any issue. The initiative enables people to interact with the police on a real-time basis. They can capture crime and live-stream it to the twitter handle of the police so that speedy and effective actions are ensured. To start with, Reddi has started posting public events from the department to quickly reach out and inform citizens and engage them in day-to-day police governance.

 
The city’s police have over one million social media followers, including both Twitter and Facebook, with whom it engages on complaints, suggestions and encouraging them to follow rules.

With the new initiative, the city police is turning to each and every smartphone in the city as an effective tool for surveillance. Periscope was acquired by Twitter in March. Earlier only available for iPhone users, the app has been recently rolled out for Android devices as well. Being an Android-heavy market, the new system looks to be an effective method for citizen engagement.