Telangana police turn to tech in bid to modernise crime control systems

Hyderabad

The Telangana police have now been equipped with what they call a “third eye,” which can keep a 360-degree watch on everything that happens in any corner of the state – be it a road accident, a fire mishap, a medical emergency, a natural calamity, a burglary or even a suspected terrorist operation.

It’s Telangana state police integrated command and control centre (TSPICCC), a 20-storied multi-towered swanky structure that came in the upscale Banjara Hills area of Hyderabad.

The newly-acquired iconic structure of the emerging software hub of the country, which was inaugurated by chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on August 4, is a “foundation prologue” to the modern technological revolution in the police department.

“The basic objective of this integrated command and control centre is not just effective policing, but also coordinating all the systems of the government sector to provide a safe and secure environment to the people in the state,” Director General of Police M Mahender Reddy said.

The TSPICCC houses the centres of all important government departments including the police, revenue, municipalities, health department and disaster management department. “In the event of any calamity or accident, the problem is solved with the coordination of all the departments,” he said.

It will have all the information regarding the government and private hospitals, ambulances, fire stations, police stations, all major locations, bus stands, railway stations, airports, major intersections, markets, etc, which is connected to the high end data analysis centre in the ICCC. “This data can be used for law enforcement and other government departments,” the DGP said.

Along with day-to-day law and order maintenance, the command control centre helps to monitor security and traffic control during large public gatherings and festivals.

Gigantic structure

Visible from any corner of Hyderabad, the 6.42 square-foot TSPICCC building is a gigantic structure with five towers - A, B, C, D and E which house different wings of the police department, right from data collection centre to command-control centre.

Tower A is the tallest of the five with 20 floors and comprises offices of all the top police officials – including Director General of Police, Hyderabad city police commissioner, intelligence chief and others. There is a separate chamber and office for the chief minister as well to enable him to hold meetings with officials whenever he comes to the tower.

Tower B, which has 15 floors, houses a technology fusion centre that receives data — from multiple apps, emergency response like Dial 100, social media, and highways watch from all over the state and responds in a fast and efficient manner. It will have all backups-related units like Dial-100, SHE safety, Cyber and Narcotics cells, Crimes and Incubation centre among others.

For now, the office of the Hyderabad police commissioner has started operating from this iconic structure. “All the other wings will be moving into their respective places one after the other shortly,” police commissioner C V Anand said.

The two towers are connected with each other on the 14th floor with a sky bridge, built at a height of 60 metres. There is a helipad on Tower A, which is capable of landing AgustaWestland AW 139, with a capacity of 15 passengers.

Tower C, has an auditorium on the ground floor, while Tower D has a media and training centre.

Tower E, which has seven floors, is the most important part of the structure, housing the Command Control and Data Centre for the purposes of multi-department coordination, CCTV (closed circuit television) monitoring, and war room.

The ICCC will be able to collect data from about 9.22 lakh cameras installed across the state. There is a giant screen with the capacity to watch the feed of one lakh CCTV cameras simultaneously. The CCTV feed and other information of all districts of Telangana connected to this ICCC.

The servers, with a storage capacity of 30 petabytes are imported from Belgium and Germany for a dedicated data centre in the ICCC. They can store the feed of 10 lakh CCTV cameras, obtained from any corner of the state.

“A CCTV on a street is linked to the police station, which is integrated to the police commissionerate and then the ICCC. Monitoring any situation anywhere in the state and guiding for action is possible from the centre,” the DGP said.

He said special software in the CCTVs send alerts to the ICCC if any suspicious thing is noticed anywhere in the state. “Pop-up will appear on the screen and the staff will be alerted instantly,” he said.

The first responder, who can be the police on patrol, can reach the incident spot within five minutes in the urban areas, 10 minutes in semi-urban areas and 20 minutes in rural areas.

The centre is equipped with the most sophisticated forensic search capability through which an analyst can do mining of the footage based on colour, vehicles, type of vehicle, gender-based search.

Similarly, it has also acquired artificial intelligence-based video analytics tools which help in detection of missing objects, crowd gathering and license plate recognition. It will add immense value to the investigation process where proactive alerts in the areas of hot listed vehicles, wanted persons of interest, crowd etc are visualized on the command & control interface providing proactive intelligence to the analyst, field officers and other stakeholders.

Best of policing from across world

According to a senior police official in the Telangana police, a lot of brainstorming had been done before coming up with the concept of ICCC in Hyderabad.

“The top police officials of the state toured different parts of the world to study the best practices in policing and fusion of modern technology with crime control systems. They studied Evidence Based Policing (EBP) conducted by internationally reputed agencies like College of Policing, UK and NYPD etc to find out how CCTV surveillance systems act as a deterrent to reduce the crime rate,” the official said.

The foundation stone for the TSPICCC towers was laid by the chief minister on November 22, 2015. The government spent more than ₹600 crore for the construction, which was entrusted to a reputed firm – Shapoorji Pallonji Group, while L&T Infotech and other multinational organizations handled technical advice and provided digital solutions.

Ramesh Kanneganti, Executive Director of Centre for Human Security Studies at Dr MCR Human Resources Development Institute, Hyderabad and an expert in internal security issues, said smart policing and humane policing were the order of the day and ICCC would definitely help the police achieve this objective.

“It is an important structure from the strategic planning point of view of the police. Emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, block chain, Internet of Things, machine learning, deep learning, 5G and metaverse will be very much useful for smart policing. In that aspect, the ICCC of Telangana police will be a role model for the entire country’s police modernisation,” Kanneganti said.

He, however, cautioned that the new technologies being brought in by the Telangana police might also be a threat to civil liberties. “When we see London police and LAPD or NYPD in the US as case studies, there are complaints regarding intrusion into citizens’ privacy and human rights violations. Such situations will be counterproductive to the entire concept of the welfare state,” he said.