Chikkamagaluru gets advanced city surveillance system

It can keep an eye on the entry and exit of vehicles, besides capturing the faces of people in public places

Chikkamagaluru city has got an advanced city surveillance system with which the police can keep an eye on the entry and exit of vehicles, besides capturing the faces of people in public places, whenever required. With the help of the Chikkamagaluru Urban Development Authority, the police have installed 64 high-quality cameras at 64 strategic locations covering the entire city.

Minister for Home Araga Jnanendra on Wednesday launched the system during his visit to the city. Around ₹50 lakh has been spent on the system. And, Chikkamagaluru is said to be the first among those cities, not chosen under the SmartCity projects, to have this advanced system.

Akshay M.H., Superintendent of Police of Chikkamagaluru, told The Hindu that as high-quality cameras had been installed, the police could get accurate information from the field. “The cameras are so powerful that they can read the vehicle registration number even at night. With automatic licence plate recognition, the vehicles could be easily identified. Similarly, we can capture faces of people with precision so that they could be used to recognise in the instance of some crime”, he said.

Explaining how the face recognition would work, the officer said if a mob of 100 people gather at a crime scene, the cameras could record all faces with precision. “This will help in investigating crimes committed in the city.” Further, he clarified that faces captured by cameras in normal time would not be added to the database, as it would be a herculean task to store every face that each camera could recongise all the time.

The city police would also monitor the entry and exit of vehicles within the city limits. The cameras installed at traffic junctions are connected to the nearest towers, which are inturn connected to the control room at the District Police Office (DPO) wireless. The district police have released a video detailing the special features of the system.