800 CCTV, 15 drones: Inside Jaipur’s corona war room
nJAIPUR: A large hall on the first floor of the Jaipur Police Commissioner’s office, near the government press, is buzzing despite the 21-day national lockdown. On the left, it has three rows of eight workstations, each with three computer screens. About 30 other screens are mounted on a wall in front.
The people who inhabit this workspace are tracking every movement, mapping every activity, on Jaipur’s streets by going through the feed from more than 800 CCTV cameras, and 15 drones hovering over the walled city. Any suspicious or illegal activity is flagged, and immediately reported to the concerned police station concerned. To the right, an additional 16 screens are tracking calls made to the police.
This is the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) war room set up by the Jaipur Police. “We monitor live feed from cameras across the city. One-hundred-and-fifty of the 800 them are PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) cameras that can rotate 360 degrees. The rest are fixed cameras,” said Adarsh Choudhary, additional superintendent of police and one of the three officers in charge of the war room.
With the help of these cameras and drones, Jaipur Police are ensuring compliance of the lockdown in the city and the curfew in the walled city areas. One-hundred-and-seventy-six cameras are in the walled city alone, and 22 of them are PTZS. Constables in plainclothes monitor rotate the
PTZ cameras for better views, if needed. The drones fly over rooftops to detect any illegal activity, such as gatherings of more than five people, in narrow and congested lanes.
“The drone footage is also monitored by respective police station areas,” said Jitendra Singh Rathore, station house officer of Manak Chowk police station, which is on a gateway to the Ramganj area.
The areas that fall under seven police stations in the walled city – Ramganj, Kotwali, Manak Chowk, Brahmpuri, Nahargarh and Galta Gate – have been under curfew since March 28.
“Our cameras are in the marketplace and at other prominent locations. We can track activities on main roads with them. For lanes and bylanes, we needed more eyes in the sky to keep track, especially because of the curfew,” said Ajay Pal Lamba, additional commission of police (law and order).
Lamba, who led the police action against Asaram Bapu in 2013 as deputy commissioner of police (DCP), Jodhpur West, also gets drone footage on his mobile phone (He keeps checking it intermittently even as he is speaking to this reporter).
There were some reports of people rushing to their rooftops to see the whizzing drones flying over them but the police had no problem with that. “As long as they stay indoors and maintain social distancing, we have no problem,” Lamba said. In the war room, three additional SPS are in charge in three shifts – 6am to 2pm, 2pm to 10pm and 10pm to 6am. The call facility has two PRI (primary rate interface) lines that can handle 60 calls at a time.
Because of the curfew, there have not been many violations in the walled city area. On Saturday, an SUV broke a police barricade in Bhankrota, a suburban town on Jaipur-ajmer national highway.