Delhi Police will now be at your doorstep in half the time than usual.
In its bid to cut the response time of distress and emergency calls, the city police have procured a new device and are in the process of developing a software with which any call made to the central police control room (CPCR) will also reach the nearest police station.
This initiative, christened the CPCR-police stations connectivity project, is the first of its kind in the country. The motive behind inducting the new and advanced “first responder system” is to cut short the response time taken by police vehicles in reaching the distressed caller, besides ensuring active participation of local policemen in emergency situations.
Currently, the average time taken by a PCR van to reach the crime spot after receiving a distress call from the caller varies between three and 10 minutes, police say. If senior police officers are to be believed, the new system will help bring down the response time to a maximum of seven minutes.
TN Mohan, special commissioner of police (operations), said the cost of the project was around Rs. 2.25 crore and its installation process would be completed in the next couple of weeks.
While explaining the functioning of the advanced first-responder system, Mohan said the hardware, which consisted of servers and computers, would be connected to terminals and telephones at police stations through the cyber highway.
“The new system will allow calls made to the CPCR to also reach the district control rooms and local police stations. It is a multi-tasking, single-point delivery system which will help us in involving local police and ensuring their presence at the crime spot without waiting for the arrival of the PCR van,” said Mohan, adding that he hopes that the advanced system will be functional by the end of July.
Any distress call now made to 100 (the CPCR number) is first received by an attendant who decides the police station concerned and forwards the call to the dispatcher. The dispatcher finds the location of the caller and dispatches the call to the district control room concerned from where the local police gets information about the call.
“In the present scenario, the role of the local police was only to arrive at the crime spot and begin their investigation. In emergency calls like road accidents, the local police reach the accident spot normally when the victims were already taken to the nearest hospital by the PCR van. But after the competition of the project, they will be bound to reach the crime spots either before or seconds after the arrival of the PCR van,” said a senior police officer.
