Fighting crime: Multan police to launch phone app

MULTAN: District police are going to launch a mobile phone application this week which citizens can use to report crime and suspicious incidents. The app would feature a special button called the Panic Alarm, which will allow the police to track the complainant wherever they are and help them.

This would be especially helpful to vulnerable segments of the society, Regional Police Officer Sultan Azam Taimuri said on Tuesday. He said the Android-based application titled, Multan Police, could be downloaded off the Google App Store and the web site www.multanpoliceapp.com.

He said the Windows and Apple iPhone versions of the app would also be available soon. He said the application had been developed by police IT experts Shafqat Rasool, Kaleem Danish and Muhammad Hanif. The Panic Alarm button could prove to be crucial to prompt police help. “The application does not occupy much space on the internal memory of Android handsets. It needs 1.2 to 1.5 megabytes,” the RPO said. Citizens could send images of a crime scene to the police via the application regardless of where they are, he said. The user would have to enable GPS so the police may locate them. The RPO said the police would then trace the location and reach out to the complainant.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 29^th, 2016.