Police Diary: Twitter handle @MumbaiPolice gives the force ‘sleepless nights’

[related-post]

On March 12 at 9.29 pm, a woman tweeted to the police: “I Just got a ‘Ladki ho, itne bheed mein aate hi kyun ho? Ghar pe baitho’ from a policeman at the #INDvsSA prac match”. She gave the exact location and got a reply: “We have forwarded your complaint to concern authority. Please let us know if you know the name of the police official”.

In the pre-Twitter world, she might not have complained at all. Now, close on the heels of how the mainstream media reports on the Mumbai Police, it is the force’s Twitter timeline that reflects its performance in the real world, one IPS officer admits.

For now, the official discourse on Twitter is composed of straightforward replies – ‘Please share exact location for prompt help’, ‘please visit the nearest police station and file this complaint’, ‘please share details of your complaint here’, ‘we are forwarding this to the traffic police’, ‘your complaint has been noted and forwarded’, ‘kindly visit police station on Saturday between 9:00 am to 11:00 am to get the status of your FIR’ and so on.

Traffic, evidently, gives rise to a lot of the complaints. Twitter users send pictures of the traffic situation and find themselves mostly pacified by @MumbaiPolice: “Your complaint has been noted and forwarded to the traffic department”.

Almost every three hours, a commuter sends pictures of uniformed policemen on motorcycles minus helmets.

Another trend is that people reach out to the Twitter handle when they cannot reach the police on the emergency number 100. For instance, “@shrutideb: Auto no ending with 1812 harassed me at the end of freeway, shivaji chowk. Tried calling 100, didn’t work @MumbaiPolice”.

There are also rather too many wild goose chases.

A senior police officer recounts one such tale – “A woman tweeted to Mumbai Police that two boys on a bike near Cigarette Factory in Chakala wrongfully touched her. I was asked to find this girl but I never found her. To probe complaints received via Twitter is a priority, but many cases are not genuine. It is a loss of manpower and time. From our recent experience, Twitter deceives the police”.

Then there is the matter of being polite, no matter what, while responding to agitated Twitter complainants. For instance, “@durgachauhan786: sir I am stay lokmanya nagar thane (w) 400606. some punks pervaded in house and hit one man police doesn’t take any action” and Mumbai Police’s response was – “@durgachauhan786 Please contact Thane Police as it is their jurisdiction”. The Thane police’s control room number was duly added.

In January, at a farewell for former Mumbai Police Commissioner Ahmad Javed who launched the @MumbaiPolice Twitter handle, one senior officer said, “Sir, you opened another channel of communication between the public and the police, but it has given me and my officers sleepless nights.”

Have a comment or suggestion for Police Diary? Write to mumbai.newsline@expressindia.com with subjectline: Police Diary