Nobody said a traffic policeman's job is easy. And if you're in a city like Bangalore, which has the highest traffic density in the country (every second person has a car; in Mumbai, the ratio is 8:1), that job just got tougher. The Bangalore Traffic Police's latest move to drive the fear of the law into the city's errant motorists? Putting cut-outs of traffic policemen at certain spots in the city.
"The police cannot be at every road and every junction. And since motorists violate the rules when they feel no policeman is around, the cut-out will act as a deterrent," says MA Saleem, additional commissioner of police, traffic, explaining the rationale behind the novel tactic. There are 500 vacancies in the 3,000-strong traffic police force, which has to deal with over 4.5 million vehicles. The idea came from a friend of Saleem's who had noticed many motorists violating the one-way injunction outside his office. "We made a cut-out of a policeman and kept it on the road and it seemed to work. So we approached Saleem with the proposal to use these in the city," says Madhusudhana B, business solutions provider at Vaspar Eco Solutions. Saleem says the response has been encouraging enough for the police to consider using more. "It's particularly effective at one-ways, and with helmetless riders. In one case, an autorickshaw driver even got out to talk to the 'officer'!" says Saleem.
But what happens when people realise it's a cut-out, as they are bound to? "We're planning to alternate the cut-outs with real police officers once in a while. And we will be replacing these cut-outs with others equipped with cameras," says Saleem. While the ordinary cut-outs, manufactured and donated to the force by Vaspar as part of its corporate social responsibility activities, cost Rs 5,000, the ones with a camera will cost Rs 50,000. "We are planning to approach other companies that might sponsor it," says Madhusudhana. One of the three cut-outs also disappeared from its post one night. "We remove the others at 10 pm and return them in the morning," says Saleem. Madhusudhana, however, is convinced that it has not been stolen and has merely been deployed elsewhere by a citizen. "Why would someone want to steal a cut-out? It would fetch hardly Rs 10 at the raddi market," he reasons.
Asked for his view on the move, Inspector Rangaswamy of the Cubbon Park traffic police station says people would initially get scared by the cut-out. "But when they realise it's a dummy, they are not." He admits, however, that they are useful at deterring motorists from violating one-way regulations.
The cut-outs, though, are just a small part of Saleem's ambitious plan to fully automate the process of nabbing violators in another two years. At present, 50 per cent of the cases registered (5.2 million last year) are caught on camera - the city has 175 CCTV cameras and 500 digital cameras have been distributed to officers. This year, another 100 CCTV cameras will be added. The officers' digital cameras will soon be replaced with others that will enable images to be sent directly to the automation centre, rather than having to upload them on a computer at the police station. The traffic police headquarters will also shift to a new complex that will have a 72-foot "video wall," on which the entire city can be surveyed on a single screen.
Once the process of catching violations becomes fully automated, the force would discard the much-feted BlackBerry drive (officers in the city use the devices to register violations instead of the paper challan). Saleem says using BlackBerries did not actually reduce corruption. "The officer has to use the device, after all. He can easily pocket the money and not record it on the BlackBerry." There will be 100 per cent transparency only when there is zero booking of cases and collecting of fines on the road, believes the IPS officer who has been awarded a doctorate in traffic management from Bangalore University.
While the traffic police's initiatives are aimed at making the city on a par with global counterparts in traffic management, even the idea to deploy cut-outs, it appears, has been used by cities abroad. The South Yorkshire Police, The Mirror reports, spent £7,000 to buy 280 cut-out cops after its force was drastically reduced because of budget cuts. The cut-outs, the article says, have reduced crime by up to 50 per cent in some areas. The most unfortunate experience seems to have been Prague's, where cut-outs of traffic policewomen at dangerous junctions ended up causing accidents, instead of preventing them. According to The Telegraph, the cut-outs "raised hemlines, high heels, stockings and lipstick" turned the dummy officers into "crash magnets."
