‘e-Beat system’ to make constables more accountable

Mysore,Nov 25: To bring in a sense of professionalism and accountability, the Mysore police is contemplating to pioneer “e-Beat System” that enables the senior police officers to monitor, assess and prepare beat plan using high tech gadgetry!The concept was first introduced in 2006 when Mr Praveen Sood was the Police Commissioner, but it was not properly implemented. Now, the police came up with more comprehensive action plan and decided to make it applicable in all 16 police station limits in the city.The Mysore Police Commissioner,Mr.Sunil Agarwal, told INN here on Wednesday that the idea was to intensify “visible policing” in Mysore,which saw communal disturbances recently. “Operation Sunset and Operation Midnight are part of our agenda to crackdown on anti-social elements.

All 16 police stations will be installed with Digital Beat Monitoring Systems to monitor the movement and punctuality of night beat policemen,” he explained.Here is how the system works: Each beat constable is assigned with a Radio Frequency Reader (RFR). He carries this to strategic beat locations (beat points), where tags are fixed with unique IDs. The constable places the RFR on the tag, which then stamps its ID, the time and date onto the reader. Once back in his station,the constable downloads the tag data onto a downloader connected to a computer.The schedule ID and the actual visited timings of a beat can be downloaded.

This way,a superior can keep track of the constable's beat.The system has an "officer's facility" to enable usage by senior police officials. Under the earlier manual system, the beat constables used to sign the Googol Beat Book kept in every police station, which in most of the times proved distorted, Mr Agarwal said.Under the e-Beat, the activity (visiting a beat point), the sequence (order) and the time of the visit are planned. With the available data, the system can also generate a Beat Map,where a beat point can be added, modified or deleted. The police can define the sequence of the beat points,their importance and other details such as address, contact name and phone number,he elaborated.