Cops to use mobile app to track property offenders

Hyderabad: Subsequent to the efforts of tracing and mapping habitual property offenders through criminal survey, the Hyderabad city police now want to make sure whether these offenders are still living in the mapped premises or migrating to other places and dodging the police vigil.

‘Hyd Cops’, a mobile application that has been added to the application bank of the city police, is now a handy tool for the crime parties to thoroughly identify a property offender. The application also contains the details of property offenders, who are currently serving imprisonment, and also database of offenders of other crimes including automobile thefts and burglaries.

The criminal survey conducted in Hyderabad in November last year, has immensely helped the city police to find out the facts and whereabouts of offenders involved in property crimes that took place in Hyderabad for the past five years. The new app ‘Hyd Cops’, though designed for internal use by the policemen, would also help in alerting the public, said a senior police officer from the City Police Commissionerate.

The officer said beat constables, mobile parties, crime parties, patrolling personnel and the Station House Officers would have direct access to the mobile application that was loaded with complete details of property offenders. The officers on the field in regular intervals have to check whether the suspect or recidivist is living in the mapped location (address) or not.

“If any suspect is not seen for a long time, the field officer should alert the concerned SHO about this, who will alert the SHOs of other police stations and also the neighboring commissionerate and districts, to prevent offences,” the officer said. Occurrence of any property offense in the absence of suspects at their residences would give specific leads to the crime parties and detection of offenses would be easier than earlier, the officer said adding that the new mobile application would be used by the cops in the third week of February.

Nevertheless, there is considerable reduction in property offences in Hyderabad, as notorious persons are cooling their heels behind bars, though some recidivists who had provided false addresses are yet to be traced and mapped. In the last five years, as many as 11,000 persons were arrested by the police for committing property offences, among which about 7,500 are residents of Hyderabad. The police managed to trace only 4,500 persons, while the others are not traceable.