Body cams for Gujarat police for better monitoring

The government of Gujarat says it is deploying 10,000 body cameras for its police personnel to improve traffic management and investigations.

Ahmedabad: Gujarat police personnel will now be equipped with body cameras to monitor the traffic and ensure efficient investigations. A demonstration was conducted in Ahmedabad on Sunday in the presence of State Home Minister Pradipsinh Jadeja and Gujarat Director General of Police Ashish Bhatia.

As many as 9,000 body cameras and 1,000 live broadcasting cameras will be introduced by the state government in the coming days, Jadeja said.

“With a budget of Rs 7,960 crore granted in this year’s budget for law and order, we intend to make Gujarat Police smart and sharp. With an estimated budget of Rs 50 crore, we intend to introduce 10,000 body cameras for our law enforcement agencies as a landmark initiative. Earlier, through the e-cop software system, we connected all police stations in Gujarat. We have connected all major police offices to district and state command control centre so that any crime incident is detected and stopped,” said Jadeja at the live demonstration held at the Gujarat Chamber of Commerce in Navrangpura of Ahmedabad.

He said body cameras will help in crime detection as well as police discipline.

“Today, we have given a live demonstration of the cameras and in the coming times, we will introduce the cameras to ensure law and order and safety of 6.5 crore people of Gujarat,” said Jadeja.

Chief Minister Vijay Rupani had announced body cameras for police personnel in the wake of incidents of clashes between people and the police over wearing masks and violation of curfews in Ahmedabad and other cities.

Tushar Jain of Axon company, which developed the body cameras, said, “The two-megapixel cameras can capture up to 50 metres and cover 140 degrees. The cameras can be used for real-time tracking by live-streaming in command centres. It has a minimum of 12 hours of battery life, a pre-event buffer system and its picture quality can be adjusted to 480p, 720p and 1080p. It can be worn anywhere on the body (shoulder, chest, pocket) and is GPS enabled with LTE connectivity and wireless activation.”

The camera also has a small LCD through which personnel can check the status of the camera recording. The camera can be submerged in water or operated in rainy conditions for eight hours and can be switched on and off 5,000 times. It can tolerate up to 10,000HZ vibration and shock up to 10,000 volts, he added.

“The cameras can work in low light conditions, have high-quality audio, noise elimination feature and clean incident audio system. They are tamper-proof with a unique ID for the users with encrypted data security system. Data/memory extraction and tampering are not possible by third party agencies. Till the time evidence is captured and presented in the court, the chain of command stays with the police,” Jain said.