With the increasing crime rate in the district, it has become all the more important for the areas to be properly regulated. As it is impossible to deploy enough force to cover all junctions and roads, the authorities also take help from CCTV cameras installed all around the district.
From checking the areas with choked traffic to identifying the routes taken by culprits, CCTV cameras play a vital role in police investigations. Considering this, the district officials have stated that more CCTV cameras should be installed in the rural areas of the district. These will be installed as soon as the required budget is released.
As per the information provided by district police, there are in total 241 CCTV cameras installed in the district. The majority of which are installed in the city area including at least eight CCTV cameras installed in the Kotwali area.
Thirty CCTV cameras are installed in the rural areas and 11 are installed in Rishikesh. In addition to that, in each police station, four cameras are installed making it a total of 80 CCTV cameras there. At least 12 CCTV cameras are installed at main junctions including Kargi Chowk, near Naya Gaon post and near Sabhawala post.
There, 56 CCTV cameras which are fixed in their position out of which 39 are installed in the city area while 32 CCTV cameras are of Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) technology out of which 19 are installed inside the city domain. For keeping a check on traffic offences, 28 Automatic Number Plate Reader (ANPR), seven Red Light Violation Detector (RLVD) and seven speed radar cameras are also installed.
Out of the 241 CCTV cameras in the district, only 79 cameras have live feed being checked in the control room set up at SSP Office.
The other feed of other CCTV cameras are checked either police stations or the posts concerned. A district official said that they are supposed to keep CCTV cameras footage of 30 days, but to be on the safer side they usually keep the footage of a longer period of time.
It is pertinent to mention here that Director General (Law and Order) Ashok Kumar has initiated a campaign on behalf of police headquarters to encourage private shop owners and general public to install CCTV cameras around their shops and houses respectively.
