Kolkata Police is rolling out tablets and electric motorbikes across the city’s police stations to reduce the time taken to respond to emergency calls and allow Lalbazar to track each case from the control room.
The equipment has already been sent to 60 police stations, while the remaining stations are expected to receive it before Mahalaya, according to Lalbazar. Each electric motorbike will be paired with a tablet held by the police officer responsible for operating the vehicle.
The system will be connected to the Lalbazar control room, which receives calls made to the police emergency numbers. Once a call is received, the control room will send a message to the tablet at the police station covering the location of the incident. The message will contain details of the reported event as well as the phone number of the caller, a police officer told Anandabazar.
The designated officer will then use the electric motorbike to travel to the location based on the information received on the tablet. After reaching the site, the officer will be required to report the action taken through the same device. That report will be sent to the Lalbazar control room and shared with the local police station.
The arrangement is intended to give senior police officers a clearer view of the response process, including how quickly a station receives information and begins action. Lalbazar will also be able to monitor how much time is taken to address a reported problem, according to the report.
If an incident requires additional personnel, the information sent to the station will allow it to deploy extra forces to the location. Kolkata Police has said the system will make citizen services more secure and help officers begin emergency operations without unnecessary delay.
The electric motorbikes are being introduced alongside the city’s existing police response vans. Kolkata Police had earlier provided tablets to personnel operating its patrol and police control room vehicles. Those tablets are linked to the Lalbazar control room and allow patrol teams to receive information about disturbances and reach the reported location.
The new motorbikes are intended to address a limitation of the larger police control room vans, which cannot enter every narrow or congested area of the city. The smaller vehicles are expected to allow officers to reach locations that may be difficult to access by van, while the existing police control room vehicle service will continue, according to the report.
The rollout is also linked to the state government’s planned introduction of emergency number 112 before Mahalaya. The existing 100 dialling service is currently operational. Calls to the emergency numbers are routed to the Lalbazar control room, which will transmit location-specific information to the relevant police station through the new tablet-based system.
The effectiveness of the arrangement will depend on how consistently stations update case status and how quickly officers act on messages received through the devices. Lalbazar’s monitoring system is expected to provide officials with response-time information once the equipment is fully operational across the city’s police stations.
