Mangalore: Traffic police will get BlackBerry on May 20

The Hindu

• ‘Karnataka will be first State to implement this proposal’

 

Mangalore, 14 April 2012: Come May 20, the traffic police in Mangalore and their colleagues elsewhere in the State will use BlackBerry for enforcing traffic rules.

 

According to Additional Director-General of Police (Police Computer Wing) Praveen Sood, BlackBerry handsets would be given to 225 officers of the rank of Assistant Sub Inspector and above. The handsets would come with Bluetooth printers that would give receipts for the fines imposed.

 

Mr. Sood told The Hindu that the State would be the first in the county to introduce paper-less enforcement of traffic rules in the State. The Bangalore City police brought in the system in 2007.

 

“There will be no issuance of challans. Traffic enforcement will be automated. This will bring in transparency in the enforcement of rules,” Mr. Sood said.

 

Mr. Sood said work was on to prepare software to support the 225 BlackBerry handsets. The software was being fed with about 25 different locations of each city. It would contain codes of the 225 police officers handling the devices. Each traffic police station would have a separate code. These devices would enable the user to send reports using internet. The work on software development is under progress since March 27, he said.

 

Mr. Sood said police’s data centre in Bangalore would be handling the information sent from the BlackBerry. The data centre receives information from 750 devices used by the Bangalore Traffic police. “Traffic enforcement across the State will be monitored from Bangalore,” Mr. Sood said.

 

Training

The department would start training the personnel from May 10. During this 10-day training, the personnel would be acquainted with the handling and usage of the BlackBerry devices, Mr. Sood said.