Madurai City Police have launched a ‘Locked House Monitoring System’ (LHMS), under which the city police will install temporary CCTV cameras free of cost in the houses whenever the residents go out of town. The project with 65 CCTVs at a cost of Rs 4.74 lakh has been sponsored by Madurai MP R Gopalakrishnan under MPLAD (Member of Parliament Local Area Development) fund. It was launched by Madurai Commissioner of Police (CoP) Mahesh Kumar Aggarwal in the presence of R Gopalakrishnan.
According to CoP, the new initiative is a first-of-its-kind in the state launched by the police department. Addressing reporters, he said that the new facility is launched as part of already existing ‘Madurai City Police’ application. A new option, LHMS, had been added in the app and when users opt for LHMS it will direct to a page where the users will be asked to register their names and personal details such as mobile numbers, mail ID and their address.
Upon request by people, when they are going to be away for long and require safety of their houses, the request will be registered in the respective police stations and police will contact them following which the CCTV cameras would be fixed in appropriate places in the houses.
After installation of CCTV cameras the footage can be accessed round-the-clock with the help of another app ‘EZVIZ’ by the house owners. Police will also be monitoring the house round the clock from the control room, CoP said. With a special feature of motion capture, any movement in front of the camera would be detected and the footage along with photos sent both to the house owners and also to the police, following which the police patrol teams would be directed to the house.
In the first phase, the facility is going to be extended to two police stations in Madurai city police limits namely Tallakulam and Koodalpudhur and other police stations will be covered gradually. When asked about the reason for selecting these stations in first phase, CoP said that Tallakulam and Koodalpudur police stations cover extensive areas in the corporation and houses are coming up fast in these areas. Presently, 65 cameras could cover 20 to 25 houses at the same time and number of cameras will be decided based on the size of the house.
