Google to help Kanpur police in 'preventive policing'

Kanpur: All nine districts of Kanpur zone will take Google's help to move away from "reactive policing" to "preventive policing" for reducing crime in the city. All the 176 police stations falling under Kanpur zone would feed last ten year's crime date to Google and then after identifying crime sensitive areas on Google Maps, police check-posts and pickets will be set up in each of those areas.

The 'preventive policing' initiative would begin from first week of July, nine districts of Kanpur zone including Kanpur (city), Kannauj, Kanpur (rural), Farukhabad, Jhansi, Lalitpur, Mainpuri, Jalaun and Itava.

Inspector General of Police (IG) Kanpur zone, Ashutosh Pandey told PTI, "Police is accustomed to 'reactive policing', wherein police reaches crime spot after the crime has been committed and then tries to nab the culprits.

"Through 'preventive policing' we can post more cops where the number of crimes have been high, and try to nab the criminals as early as possible," IG Pandey said.

Data-feeding to Google would help the police in understanding crime patterns specific to a particular locality, he said and added one young policeman from every station would be given training in how to integrate emerging technology tools like 'Google Maps' into ongoing police operations.

IG Pandey, who was transferred to Kanpur last week, has implemented similar initiatives earlier in Agra as well.