Following allegations that the City Patrol Unit has become a money-spinning machine for the police department even while harassing vehicle users by imposing penalties on them on charge of traffic violations, Rajpur Road MlA Rajkumar led a delegation of aggrieved people to the state Director-General of Police BS Sidhu and has demanded that the unit be provided adequate training to deal with traffic violations and the problem areas identified immediately.
The City Patrol Unit (CPU), which was formed as a swift response team to check crimes like chain- snatching, eve-teasing and other offences in the city, is busy slapping challans on those violating traffic rules blatantly, it was alleged. An untrained unit, CPU seems to know only how to make money by imposing challans. The unit, it is also alleged, is responsible for causing undue anxiety to vehicle users, especially women, who are apprehensive of misuse of video clips taken by the police.
Some women expressed their outrage over videography of traffic violations by the personnel. To understand their style of functioning The Pioneer correspondent spent two hours with CPU members on Saturday. In an incident at Rajpur Road (Jakhan), CPU members were informed via walkie-talkie to reach Jaswant Mordern School (JMS) immediately for resolving a traffic congestion.
Instead of responding to the call, they were busy probing traffic rule violations by individual drivers. A boy, who was caught not wearing helmet, was heard saying, “I am suffering from headache and I am coming from the hospital and the doctor has advised me to avoid using helmet for a while. I have had to paid the challan already to another police team and this is my challan slip.” The police let him off.
A 20-year old woman who was on a scooty without helmet and was moving towards Rajpur Road, told the unit, “Please do not make video clips as I am ready to pay challan for traffic violations.” A woman who is working in NGO, was caught riding scooty in a wrong direction by the unit. According to her, she followed a bike which was also going to patrol pump by using wrong direction. She was asked to pay challan while the other bike went unnoticed.
“Though, I am paying the challan, why were you (unit members) negligent on their duty,” she added. Since its (CPU) inception they have imposed as many as 5,521 challans on people travelling without helmet, 538 for rash driving, 560 for red light jumping, 94 for driving without seat belt, 80 for triple riding, five for cars without number plate, 2,717 for other traffic violations. The CPU collected compound fee of Rs 13, 19, 100 in a month.