Police plan high-tech beef-up to fight crime

KUALA LUMPUR: Police constables equipped with hand-held computers, micro cameras fitted into walkie-talkies and greater use of forensic tools – these will be part of a massive plan to beef up the force. Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan said police wanted to use high-tech devices and set up a network of camera surveillance to fight crime.

“The Bukit Aman control centre will use the latest high-tech devices and communication systems to relay, monitor and coordinate operations throughout the country,” he said in an interview with The Star yesterday.

The project, costing several billion ringgit, is expected to take off by the end of the year.
Under the project, the Bukit Aman control centre would not only be able to communicate and monitor operations on land but also from “surface to air or surface to sea”, Musa said.
This means that police helicopters would be fitted with sophisticated surveillance cameras that can feed images, even those taken at sea, to the control centre for tracking purposes.
Musa said: “We need an e-solution system that will enable us to communicate with our police helicopters, airplanes and marine police as well as with our mobile police vehicles, traffic policemen in patrol cars and on motorcycles.”

Even constables would be equipped with hand-held computers and micro cameras would be fitted in their walkie-talkies for monitoring purposes, he said.

“Police patrol cars will be fitted with mobile personal computers that will enable policemen to check and verify the status of a person as well as that of a vehicle on the spot instead of having to bring them to the police station and inconveniencing them,’’ Musa added.

It is learnt that the Government had looked into buying such a system after witnessing its impressive capability during a recent demonstration of its use in developed countries. Musa said the upgrading would pave the way for what he termed “Malaysia's Future Cops”, adding however: “The only difference is that it is not too far away.” The massive project, he said, would see every department in the police force going high-tech, including the forensics department.

He said the forensics department needed to be better equipped, as crime itself was getting very sophisticated. Citing the recent high-profile Nurin Jazlin case as an example, Musa said a police officer was sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States to seek help just to enhance the clarity of an image captured by a web camera.

“If we had the equipment here, we would be able to investigate faster.

“We must be one step ahead of the crooks at all times,” he said.

The IGP said that the FBI had agreed to help conduct courses, and 60 officers from the CID and the Commercial Crimes and the Narcotics Crimes Investigations departments had been selected to attend the courses.

The Star