Let me begin by stating the obvious: probably nobody from the Mysore city police force will read this, but I will make a few notes here nonetheless.
What we need is not — at least not most of the time — an elaborate online form to make complaints. Like me, I am sure half of the human population hates forms. Call me irresponsible, but I have no idea if a priority-B control centre number exists; it would help spread out emergency calls and increase efficiency of police functioning.
The police in New Zealand, for instance, have a *555 FREE dialling order in place. The idea is that non-life-threatening calls are made to *555 FREE and top priority emergencies are to be reported at 111 — their equivalent of 911, 999, 100 etc.
The Public Eye project that Mysore city police has just launched, to help citizens report crimes, is a step in the right direction, but it is far from encouraging. Apart from the fact that their complaint form takes several seconds to load, it is also much harder to access than one would like.
A common problem around here (as far as my experience goes) is people’s inaction in the time of crises. Passersby would rather be spectators for fear of police procedures stacked on them rather than help out. Nobody likes half their day snatched away to clarify points as a key witness in a first investigation report.
The complaint form should do away with the complainer’s details area. Providing the complainer’s details should, at best, be made anonymous, or, at least, be made discretionary.
It is not so much a question of anonymity as it is of preventing inconvenience. All of us would like to teach the smart guy cutting through the queue a lesson, but hardly at the cost of our time.
The Port St Lucie police and the Los Altos PD, for instance, have a field that allows the complainer to opt whether they would prefer the police not contact them. That would serve the purpose just fine, so long as the cops can honour their end of the deal.
Once again, I have no idea if there is an app for this, but one is definitely necessary. I would not spend my phone’s memory on keeping one, but for those who would not mind, the police force should definitely look towards bringing an app.
The Beaverton Police (in Oregon) have another interesting field that I had not thought of myself: there is an option to tick off the days an inconvenience is caused. Indeed a lot of inconveniences that warrant legal warnings without necessarily being grave offences are what we come across most often: that John Doe who does this irritating thing on our commute to work everyday, or that Jane Doe who drives her new sports car around the block fifty times an hour etc. This field should definitely get on the Public Eye form.
Also, the website of the Mysore city police has breadcrumbs, but no call-to-action buttons that boldly direct a visitor to their complaint form. That is web designing 101 that Global Buzz® (who designed the website) seems to be happily unaware of.
It is funny, but I speak as a photographer when I say this — the photograph upload form does not allow uploading of RAW files. Who knows when we may need to do it, or when we may not have the time to convert it to jpg.
There are some funny things such as a “Not wearing seat belt” and a “violating lane discipline” option under the violation dropdown. First of all, who would bother to notice a passing driver to check his seatbelt, let alone note down his number, unless one was looking for such a violation? As for the lane discipline, that is simply absent all over the country, so we might as well all go book ourselves.
By contradistinction, what is needed but is absent, is an others option. There should always be an others option just to make things future-proof and leave room for unexpected possibilities. Additionally, a clarification box would be useful. One man’s view of crime may neither be defined by nor agree with another’s. My point agrees with the witness form of the Pennsylvania department of justice, which asks, “Please explain why you think a crime occurred”.
Further, a field requesting the complainer to describe the alleged criminal/s should be added. It is a basic question that I was surprised was nowhere in sight: we may not note a license plate, we may not even note the make of a car, but there is a greater chance we saw the alleged criminal as he was committing the alleged crime.
These are merely some notes on how the Public Eye project may be improved. The concerned personnel may never read it, as I have already said, but these exist as a record of my thoughts at a time when the cops in Mysore decided to use some online measures to involve citizens — even if they were a little late in doing something which is a requisite in the 21st century.
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