The social media savvy Bengalaru City Police is ensuring it adapts itself to the digital age and fights crime on and off the internet.
At a time when India’s police force is being continuously accused of their lackadaisical approach towards addressing daily grievances of citizens, including being utterly unaware about catering to their internet audience, the Bengaluru City Police stands out as an exception. [caption id=“attachment_2336660” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]![The logo of the Bengaluru city police. Image courtesy: Twitter @BlrCityPolice]()
to The logo of the Bengaluru city police. Image courtesy: Twitter @BlrCityPolice[/caption] Using the power of social media to its advantage, the Bengaluru city police is probably the only police force in the country to have been lauded for being this efficient and prompt. Its Twitter account
@BlrCityPolice, which was started in September 2014, boasts of more than 60,000 followers. That is almost three times more than
K Siddarmaiah, the Chief Minister of Karnataka who has around 22,000 followers. Active on
Facebook as well, they have been successful in getting 160,000 people to follow their page. And it’s not just this one handle but infact the entire network of the city police force is on Twitter. Apart from
MN Beddi, Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru who has more than 1.2 lakh followers, all senior officials above the top of Deputy Commissioner have an active Twitter account. They make it a point to prioritise Twitter/Facebook complaints. In fact a number of cases have been solved only based petitions posted online. The police force not only update their pages frequently but also report on heavy traffic routes, introduce new officers who can be contacted for specific issues and ask for suggestions and opinions from the public. This also explains the immense goodwill it enjoys on social networking sites, especially Twitter. Disha Bhandula, a 22-year-old college student from the city explains the reason behind the city police’s popularity, “More than being available online, which is the biggest plus, the fact that the Bengaluru city police are responsive is what clicks. If I’m a victim of any untoward incident, I know for a fact that I can reach out to them on Twitter and expect a reply. It redefines the concept of by the people, for the people and of the people.” Additionally, its intent to improve public perception is confirmed with the city police pursuing another ambitious project wherein citizens can live-stream a crime as and when it happens through Periscope, a live-streaming mobile application that was acquired by Twitter earlier this year, reported Hindustan Times on Friday. According to
Economic Times, the police control room will be able to find the location of the crime when the person live-streams the incident and alert the jurisdictional police. The police hope it will work as a ’live surveillance camera in everybody’s pocket’. They have also given crowdsourcing information on the internet a push to solve crimes. According to an
Indian Express article, Beddi called for ‘Tweetformants’ and said, “Online crowdsourcing gives us a parallel version of an incident from eyewitnesses or the victim. Even minor bits of information from the public can provide breakthroughs,” That’s not all
MN Reddi announced on Twitter, that the city police also have plans to be accessible on Whatsapp and Instagram, as well. Stressing on the importance of social media, Beddi highlighted the contribution of ‘Social media as community policing 2.0’ at the 2nd Bangalore Diplomatic Circle which took place on Friday and revealed that the Bengaluru city police has around
20 people on the social media desk to ensure that the official accounts are updated 24/7. The result is thus- a virtual explosion of issues and grievances on traffic problems, pointing out offences and public nuisance among others being discussed by citizens who are rest assured that necessary action will be taken. All the outlets where Bengaluru City Police can be reached on
It’s no wonder then that the Bengaluru city police is the country’s only police department to be part of the Prime Minister’s Twitter Samvad programme. All three Twitter accounts operated by Bengaluru police — City police commissioner (@cpblr), Bengaluru city police (@BlrCityPolice) and Bengaluru traffic police (@blrcitytraffic) made it to the selected list of 16 important accounts, as a part of the Digital India initiative, stated a
Times of India article. If that’s not enough for other state police forces in the country to be inspired, here are three times the Bengalaru city police effectively discharged its duties- When the Additional Commissioner of Police-Traffic started his Friday morning like this-
The time when the city police made everyone sit up and take notice
The time when MN Reddi, Commissioner of Bangalore Police gave everyone a lesson on how to be prompt.
The time when they didn’t shy away from responding to allegations and providing an explanation
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