Chennai city police to get 2,700 CCTV cameras to track crime zones

City police sources said a pilot project would be run in the area under the Teynampet police station limit at first and based on the success of the project, cameras would be installed in all police station limits. 

“Each of the 135 police stations in the city would be getting 20 cameras and these cameras would be installed in the most crime prone areas under their jurisdiction. The finer details of the programme would be decided after implementation of the pilot project at Teynampet police station,” SN Seshasai, additional commissioner of police, headquarters, Chennai city, told DTNext.

He said a control room would be set up to monitor the visuals from these CCTV cameras. However, police sources told that details regarding connectivity and continuous monitoring of these cameras are yet to be worked out. 

“We have placed the orders for the cameras and we will be getting them soon,” IG Technical, N K Senthamarai Kannan, said. 

It is not important just to have CCTV cameras but we need to have cameras with Virtual Private Networks or should have a system to continuously monitor the visuals from these cameras, officials said. 

The Chennai city police had wasted several crore of rupees after setting up a specialised control room at the 7th floor of the existing city commissioner office. This control room was expected to monitor the CCTV feed from the cameras installed at the traffic junctions. But the system collapsed within no time and all the installed cameras were ruined due to poor connectivity and lack of maintenance. 

“Better planning is needed to make maximum use of these cameras. CCTV cameras have been playing a very important role in crime prevention and detection, but we need to have best back-up systems in place,” another senior police official said.