PETALING JAYA: More eyes in the sky are in the works to expand the situational awareness on the ground, says Comm Datuk Hussein Omar Khan (pic).
The state top cop said instead of adding more bricks-and-mortar outposts, having a fluid and mobile surveillance system would be much more useful in the ongoing fight against crime.
“We actually do not need many police stations because it is not often that the public goes there.
“If we expect a police station in every neighbourhood, it is unrealistic as we would need to station our personnel there.
“This would affect our manpower which would have to be taken away from patrols,” he said in an interview.
Comm Hussein said a quicker response time is a better solution.
“After the team on the ground assesses the situation and provides advice, then you can head to the station.
“The response time should be within minutes. This is what we want to improve,” he said.
Among the pilot projects that Comm Hussein has proposed for next year is to retrofit police vans to be mobile CCTV, effectively enhancing the already existing fleet without tapping into precious manpower.
“We want to equip our vehicles with recording devices to enable 360° recording capabilities.
“The plan is to do this on our mobile police station vans, to use these vehicles for patrols and, more importantly, to record video.“We also want these vans to have drone capabilities as this will further provide an overall view,” he added.
Comm Hussein said these new capabilities would be a significant multiplier as a patrol team’s capacity to monitor an area would be greatly enhanced with the same manpower.
“Probably, they will focus in one area for two to three hours, then they move on. We are looking at pushing this out in high-crime areas and for crowd controlling operations.
“We want to enhance our existing vans to add on to their roles. Previously, two officers can only cover a limited area but now it’s larger and also recorded on camera,” he said.
