A hawk's eye on criminals, Police to place facial recognition cameras in Bengaluru

Bengaluru: Facial recognition may be a new feature on our smartphones, but our city police are planning to use the technology to track down criminals. It plans to install smart facial recognition cameras in five undisclosed locations in the city, within a month, which will help them to nab the criminals.

The smart CCTV cameras will have live recording and photographs of notorious criminals will be uploaded and as soon as it recognises one it will send an immediate alert to the control room along with the location, making it impossible for the criminals to escape. The camera locations have not been disclosed due to security reasons. It could be in the busiest or deserted areas.

City Police Commissioner T. Suneel Kumar said these cameras will act as a deterrent, as the criminals will be scared to commit offences as they are being watched and even if they do, they will be caught immediately. This technology will be helping us to track down all the criminals in the city.

“Adapting this particular technology will make the public feel secure in the city,” he added. He further said that we are having a constant watch on them through normal CCTV cameras, but these smart cameras will allow us track and hunt them down.

DCP Admin Bhushan Gulabrao Borase said these smart cameras are capable of recognising faces even with old photographs and an experiment was done few months ago, where 5-10 year old photographs of few criminals were uploaded and the cameras immediately recognised the faces and within seconds an alert was sent with the location.

For now we are installing five such cameras in the city within a month and we are also planning to install more number of such smart cameras in future, which will help us to nab the culprits within minutes after the crime, he added.

A senior official said that in future they are planning to install these smart cameras in major traffic junctions, metro and railway stations, bus stations and airports.The police have also identified sensitive areas to install these cameras, where there are more number of assault, robbery and chain snatching cases reported, he said.