Friday, June 10, 2011

Chandigarh Police: Police & Facebook: UT police yet to work out Facebook strategy

CHANDIGARH: UT police tried to show it is tech savvy by trying to ape the Delhi cops' move of using a Facebook page for people to report traffic violations.

However, it has now got stuck while trying to ascertain the authenticity of what the people report and pictures they upload.Sources said the police did not have a specific method of ascertaining the information's authenticity.

Two such pictures reportedly highlighted zebra crossing violation at an undisclosed dividing road and were rejected in the absence of any set procedure for checking them, traffic police sources added.

Ironically, Delhi traffic police, which introduced Facebook concept first, told the public to also provide the date, time and place of the photographs. They also asked the person uploading to be the picture to post his name properly.

Talking to TOI, joint commissioner (traffic), Delhi police, Satyendra Garg, said, ''We have a provision of forensic examination of the picture if an offender contests the challan.'' Garg maintained if the uploaded picture was found fake, a criminal case was registered against the person posting it.

A visit to the Facebook wall of UT traffic police revealed a majority of complaints and some pictures did not have information like date, time and location of the offence. UT's DSP (traffic) Vijay Kumar said, ''The work on UT traffic police's Facebook is on primary stage.''

He said they would also post an advisory on Facebook for this.

More than 150 comments were received on the page from city residents and majority highlighted malpractices of traffic cops for challaning vehicles instead of regulating the traffic flow on the roads.

Show Of Concern

Naveen Soni posted, ''Like other friends, my main concern is that traffic cops make no effort to control the traffic and deter offenders to break traffic rules while hiding behind bushes and poles. Their only interest is to stop offenders to fleece them. Instead of discouraging the people to commit offence, they caught them after the offence. This is serious and needs to be tackled. This happen only on small roundabouts.''

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