Over 30 private firms and individuals have come forward to donate their handycams to the city traffic police to help them record drunk driving offenders.
The increasing number of accusations against Bangalore Traffic Police (BTP) officials led to BTP’s innovative ‘record the offender’ initiative.
However, since the initiative took off 11 months ago, the government has provided them only with 50 handycams. With nearly 125 drunken driving check-posts in the city, the lack of handycams has affected the police in many cases.
To further this campaign, around 30 anonymous private players have come forward to donate handycams to the city police.
“We currently have 50 handycams. Many people have recently approached us to donate their cameras to facilitate recording of proceedings between an offender and the police stationed at the check-posts,” said M A Saleem, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic).
The department has been often criticised for abusing/harassing offenders and cases of complaints against police officials have been registered too. Further, the BTP believed that recording the entire proceedings would help bring even the offenders in line, as they would not misbehave when they know they are going to be shot on camera.
“Recording has helped us many times when people use abusive language or try to misbehave with the police. On the flip side, in case an offender claims that the police misbehaved with them then there will be proof for that too. The recordings are saved with us and we use them only when a case is filed,” Saleem said.