Bengaluru (Bangalore) is a large city in India with a huge population (8.5 million inhabitants) and the city’s police commissioner, MN Reddi is planning to use Periscope, a livestream service owned by Twitter to fight crime in the city.
A good write-up on our periscope.V need more of our followers to join us on periscope. Possibilities seem endless!! pic.twitter.com/iuGPesWmCE
— M N Reddi, IPS (@CPBlr) July 10, 2015
When implemented, Bangalore residents will use the app to livestream offences or crimes they see. There will be a control room in place to find the location the livestream comes from & the person shooting it and subsequently alerting the police station near the location. Apparently the commissioner got the idea of using Periscope from a conference he attended that was organized by Twitter and thought he should try it out.
In addition to determining location of livestreams of offences by the public, he also wants to use the app to conduct press conferences where the public can interact with them. MN Reddi is known to be an avid Twitter user and scrolling his timeline reveals his intent to use social media as a platform that will improve the quality of police work in his city. He also intends to use Whatsapp as the other platform in his quest for a community policing project based which is powered by social media platform.
We shall start our own WhatsApp soon. Testing phase is on now. https://t.co/C8N3K6w8Rr — M N Reddi, IPS (@CPBlr) July 10, 2015
In Kenya, we have Chief Kariuki (Twitter @ChiefKariuki) who is known locally, regionally and internationally as the chief who uses Twitter to fight crime in his location. On Twitter, you can subscribe to receive texts to your phone from a specific person and that is how his residents receive updates from him. He receives a complaint from a resident about let’s say a lost goat and by tweeting it, he is able to supply the information to the rest.
In this case of the social media savvy Indian police commissioner, you can see the increasing use of social media to fight crime. We only hope our local police can be able to use the various platforms that are available to start a community policing effort based on social media like the one the Bangalore police commissioner is aiming to establish
Source:Economic Times India
