Tirupati: The Chittoor district police will introduce a unique scheme of using ‘Community Police Officers' (CPOs) for the district's ‘Safe City ‘project to render better services and maintain friendly public relations.
Superintendent of police G. Srinivas said, “We will implement the community police project in a phased manner. I want the public to feel safe and secure.”
The ‘Community Police System’, which is designed to reduce the police's workload, will have retired government officials working as CPOs.
The police will hire 50 for each police station in the first phase to bridge the gap between the police and public, and increase the number as per requirement.
The CPOs, who will get training, will work without an honorarium and with a service motto.
A traffic problem on the highway or near a village will call for a CPO whose services will be used to regulate traffic and observe rules, working in a friendly manner with the public.
Similarly, the police department will conduct awareness programmes to reduce road accidents, check thefts, chain snatching and eve-teasing incidents.
The CPOs will conduct these programmes on behalf of the police. The police department has conducted a survey of the public's expectations of them.
A team, consisting of 400 students, including those from engineering and MBA, led by police officials, met 4,000 people from all walks of life, such as professionals, college lecturers, businessmen, hawkers and housewives from all 40 wards of the city, and asked them their safety requirements.
A report of their findings, which was submitted to Mr Srinivas, took note of people's complaints, which included: the call money racket, drunks, prostitution, traffic congestion, eve teasing and other such grievances.
The police plan to prepare an action plan to solve these problems immediately and are considering putting up a police outpost in some areas to get feedback.
