Crime rates down as cops beef up surveillance in city

The police focused on offences like automobile thefts, dacoity, attention diversion, house burglaries, murder for gain, theft, pseudo police, robbery and chain snatching

Chain snatching cases dropped sharply in Hyderabad to just six last month from 41 cases a year ago. Other crimes like attention diversion, vehicle thefts, ordinary thefts and daytime house burglaries also dropped by 70 per cent. Police said that crime mapping and strict surveillance led to the prevention of crimes.

The police focused on nine categories of offences like automobile thefts, dacoity, attention diversion, house burglary (day), house burglary (night), murder for gain, theft, pseudo police, robbery and chain snatching.

Joint commissioner of police Dr T. Prabhakar Rao told DC that a most of the property offences were automobile thefts and ordinary thefts. “An estimated 1,419 automobile thefts were registered in 2013 followed by 1,437 in 2014 and 1,105 in 2015. To prevent this we have increased surveillance by deploying plain cloth teams at places where automobile thefts were being registered regularly. We got good results. Chain snatching has also come down after crime-mapping surveillance,: he said.

About public participation, the joint CP said the crime team held meetings with colony associations. “The CCTV project is being run successfully. Apart from it, the colonies, where major crimes were registered earlier, have been provided gates. From 10 pm to 5 am only a single entry and exit will be allowed in these colonies,” he said.

Meanwhile, good results have been reported by the First Response Command Control (FRCC) programme launched last year by the Cyberabad police. Under FRCC, police can reach crime spots in 10 minutes. The police has been deploying patrol vehicles, 21 interceptor vehicles and 190 Blue Colt teams in crime prone areas. Each interceptor vehicle is headed by an SI or an ASI and the Blue Colts are run by local teams. These vehicles visit each and every locality including small streets round the clock.

An official source from Cyberabad said that about 6,000 patrol points were identified after crime-mapping. “Each interceptor visits a point every hour and Blue Colt bikes visit all points every half-an-hour. The FRCC staff works in three shifts and vehicles under this programme travel nearly 25,000 km a day,” the source said.

Cyberabad police commissioner C.V. Anand told DC that in order to prevent chain snatching, the FRCC teams were being deployed at temples day-wise — Saturdays at Venkateswara Swamy temples, Fridays at Laxmi temples and Thursdays at Baba temples.