Spread over an area of 1483 sq. kms. with a population of over 1.8 crores, Delhi is amongst the most populous cities in the world with a density of approximately 6000 persons per sq. km. With the city's growth outpacing planned development, policing in Delhi has become an onerous and ever expanding responsibility. As policemen cannot always be present at all places, efforts of community policing and appropriate usage of technology go a long way to contribute towards making the city safe and secure.
Delhi Police has taken a number of community initiatives in the past, prominent among which has been the Neighbourhood Watch Scheme. In the traditional Neighbourhood Watch Scheme, the residents of a particular area are called upon to come together and through combined efforts take measures like tenant & servant verification, verification of vendors, hiring of chowkidars, controlled access to the locality through fixing of gates and installing safety equipment like magic eye, door bell, anti auto theft devices etc. The police in such schemes acts as a facilitator.
In the field of technology, Delhi Police has inter-alia been using CCTV coverage of important market places and border checkposts, duly funded by the government, for prevention and detection of crimes. However, since requirement of CCTV cameras in the city is very large, it was decided by the Delhi Police to increase the scope of the concept of the Neighbourhood Watch Scheme to include installation of CCTV cameras as well, wherever the residential community is willing to take a lead in their area.
In this direction, the residents of the Civil Lines area in North District have taken a giant stride and in association with Delhi Police they have come forward to cover the entire Civil Lines residential area through CCTV cameras. Their association named ‘Club Class’ has installed 67 cameras spread in 16 clusters and covering over 2000 households. These are quality mega-pixel cameras and with recording facility at each cluster, these cameras will be further connected through internet to provide viewing facility at any remote locations including a monitoring station set up at Police Station Civil Lines.
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