Technology is the main ingredient for the green city’s success because Bangalore’s cool cops make it so. In other words, the Bangalore police are just a tweet away in case of emergencies and super accessible on Facebook. Be it traffic or otherwise, their presence on social media has made many Samaritans life easy in this metro (atleast that’s what it looks like).
Though most of the media is behind getting cruel footages of the dark side of police, we somehow can’t seem to ignore their small affectionate endeavors that make living tension free in this big city.
Iftikar Pasha, a private firm employee was much worried when he lost 4 lakh and 100 grams of gold in a burglary. As if he didn’t suffer much, he started getting anonymous calls from a stranger who threatened to harm him. To communicate this with the police, Pasha tweeted his problem to the Bangalore Police’s twitter id COP Bangalore (@cpblr). In a day’s time, he was summoned and the Police sought to give him and his family protection.
In another incident, 2 girls were taken for a ride when the auto driver started bullying them for excess fare. Another person who noticed this, took to twitter to inform the police. In 2 days, the police traced the driver and booked the auto driver for his rude behavior.
The whole social media revolution is Bangalore Police Chief Commissioner, Mr M N Reddi’s brainchild, who took over in the wake of the rape cases. He may not reply to many of the tweets but he does read them. With him taking over, the Bangalore Cops online presence has gone up.
Their facebook page is as impressive as it can get. Using some cool lingo, they seem to have attracted as many as 36,000 followers on twitter and with more than 95,000 likes on Facebook, they sure are making ripples in administration.
They update their pages frequently and report on heavy traffic routes, introduce new officers who can be contacted for specific issues, ask for suggestions and opinions. They even put up some cool safety precautionary videos and posts and most importantly answer and record all complaints and grievances. They even promote car pooling. They also make it a point to give safety instructions during blasts, danger and inform people about fraud messages etc.
In another case, an over-speeding cab was booked for rash driving on a specific main road. An onlooker cleverly video-taped the whole thing and sent it to the Bangalore Traffic Police. And much sooner, the owner of the vehicle was heavily fined. Many Radio Jockeys in Bangalore after having taken notice of the police’s online presence do mention them so that Bangaloreans are aware of using Social media to contact the cops.
Gone are the days when 100 was dialed, now with smart technology and internet access, Bangalore’s cool cops are earning more likes and followers. Way to go, Bangalore Cops! Thanks for making the city safer.
