The Superintendent of Police, Vellore, S. Rajesh Kannan, on Thursday instructed all banks, jewellery showrooms, pawn brokers and cooperatives in the district to upgrade their surveillance system by January 1.
The system should have high-end CCTV cameras with better resolution installed in all four directions of the premises to prevent crime.
Thursday's initiative comes in the wake of the gold and diamond jewellery heist in a gold retail chain’s outlet in Vellore on December 15. Subsequently, the police recovered the entire lost jewellery worth around ₹8 crore and arrested the suspect from his hideout in Odugathur village near Anaicut along Jawadhu Hills on Monday.
Over 200 representatives of these establishments from various parts of the district participated in the three-hour-long meeting. Police officers shared their knowledge on preventing crime by taking safety measures.
Special team
“Special police teams will also be constituted to check whether the instructions given at this meeting are implemented by these establishments in the coming weeks. We have also encouraged the representatives to have an internal safety audit for their establishments on a yearly basis,” Mr. Rajesh Kannan said.
One of the key safety lacuna that was found in last week's gold heist was absence of CCTV cameras with better resolution on all four directions of the gold retail showroom in Katpadi. This helped the suspect drill the rear side wall of the showroom for a week.
Also, the police said that such crimes are committed mostly during monsoon and winter as residents are likely to mistake the drilling noise for thunder and lightning
Another security lapse in such establishments was the lack of a monitoring system for security guards in their cabins, especially during night.
Most of the crimes happen between 12 midnight and 3 a.m., when security personnel are fast asleep in front of the showrooms.
“In this heist case, we found that the suspect was inside the showroom for almost two hours, from 12 in the midnight taking his time to decamp with the valuables,” he said.
Some of the safety measures that need to be incorporated by these establishments, include pinhole CCTV cameras, burglars' alarm, access control system with thumb impressions, fire alarm, monitoring of CCTV cameras manually and through gadgets, additional storage facility for CCTV camera footage through cloud and at least a few cameras facing the stretches where such establishments are located.
Albert John, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), Vellore, K.S. Sundaramurthy, ADSP, P. Palani, DSP (Katpadi), and K. Ramamurthy, DSP (Gudiyatham), participated in the meeting.
