Traffic Police to install 500 high resolution surveillance cameras to manage crime, traffic

Kolkata Traffic Police, in an attempt to curb the fleeing of the accused after committing a crime or violating traffic norms, have taken up an initiative to install 500 high resolution surveillance cameras at intersections across the city.

At present there are 2 mega pixel cameras installed at most of the crucial intersection but officers of the city’s traffic police realised that better quality video footages are required for better detection of crime and to keep a watch on a situation that may lead to law and order trouble. As a result, steps have been taken to bring major part of the city under surveillance of 5 mega pixel cameras replacing the existing 2 mega pixel ones.

The points where 5 mega pixel cameras will be installed have already been finalised and the procurement of the 500 cameras is in the stage of tendering processes.

Explaining the need of installing the high resolution cameras, a senior police officer said, “The 5 mega pixel cameras will be installed at the locations where we need to keep a watch for multiple purposes like law and order situation, any sort of crime taking place and at the same time traffic norms violation cases. The 2 mega pixel cameras will continue to function at the locations where the main purpose of the cameras is to record movement of vehicles for traffic related issues.”

It may be mentioned that footages of surveillance cameras installed at intersections of roads have come up as a key instrument for investigating officers to detect a crime. At the same time, preliminary idea on steps needed for better traffic management by assessing traffic load of different time of a day and types of vehicles plying on a particular road are made after going through video footages captured by surveillance cameras.

Thus, need of installing 5 mega pixel cameras were felt after certain incidents in the city. Sources said that one of such incident was the recent accident at the intersection of Belvedere Road and AJC Bose Road crossing in which 3 persons were killed and 19 were injured after a Sedan jumped a red light and ramped into a road side railing along the pavement where pedestrians were waiting to go across the road.

When contacted, V. Solomon Nesakumar, Deputy Commissioner (Traffic), said, “The work to identify the locations where the 500 five mega pixel cameras will be installed is almost complete and the work of installing the same will start soon.”

With installation of 500 high resolution 5 mega pixel cameras, the total number of such surveillance cameras in the city will reach to 700. The reason being some locations were brought under the coverage of 200 high resolution cameras in the past six months.

At the same time the Kolkata Traffic Police is introducing more speed detection cameras and the surveillance cameras at intersections of roads will have an integrated software to monitor red light violation.

The state wide campaign of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Safe Drive Save Life, has helped to bring down the number of accidents in the city by 7 per cent. It had helped reduce the number of accidents in Hooghly, Nadia, North and South 24-Parganas by around 50 per cent in the first three months post the campaign launch.

Thus, senior police officers of the city police’s traffic department feel that installation of high resolution cameras and other similar steps will help to reduce the number of accidents further with better traffic management and enforcement of traffic norms.