Deputy Commissioner of Police Isha Pant took to Twitter today to announce the launch of a new e-beat system in South East division of the city. Created by a city firm, it is an Android app loaded on smartphones and tablets of constables and senior officials who can monitor their routes to ensure proper attendance, transparency and accountability. There are QR cards pasted at every point of the neighbourhood. Whenever a constable passes by, he has to scan it to record his attendance. Click on the video above to get a feel of the new system. This is to avoid the age-old practice of night beat constables, some of whom would skip their rounds and make an manual entry in the log book at the police station. So far, there are about 1000 installs of the app by the police officials.
The e-beat concept is not new to the police department, but it failed everytime it was launched. Eight years ago, the city police had given Radio Frequency Readers (RFR) that the cops had to use to record their attendance at different points of their jurisdiction. But before it could become the gold standard, it became dysfunctional as the machines went defunct and there was no technical support from the vendor as the police department had not entered into an Annual Maintenance Contract. Read more about that HERE.
Chennai was the first city in India to introduce an ‘e-beat’ system in 2001. In 2008, it was also revamped, but it remained a non-starter even in 2014. The present Subhahu system being used by the Bangalore Police is a 2017 invention. They have been conducting pilot runs of this in a few districts of Karnataka.
In September 2019, the Chandigarh police launched the e-Saathi phone app which includes an e-beat book system that allows the cops with patrolling, and offers citizens some crucial services like reporting crime, servant and tenant verification, and so on. If this app proves successful, the Bangalore Police could replicate this here as well to make policing more holistic and citizen-centric.
