After 105 years, cops’ notice goes digital

The Mumbai police has paid a tribute to S.M. Edwardes, the British officer who introduced the daily bulletin system for inter departmental information. The system, which began in 1911, has after 105 years gone paperless.

This move also marks the activation of the Mumbai Police Information System (MPIS) — an online network connecting all police stations.

The Police Notice system is an almost a daily ritual for police officers. The bunch of a papers in a yellow paper folder with the logo of the Mumbai Police contains details of good detections, daily crime happenings, inter departmental orders, special notices and sometimes even achievements of police officers in and out of their officials duties. These notices are printed in sets to be distributed to all Mumbai Police units. This includes one each for all the 94 police stations, ACP and DCP offices, special branches and units under the police department and all of it circulated by hand in a special van.

On June 1, the Mumbai police made a massive leap in the direction of e-governance; taking the police notice system to a digital platform. Police Notices will now be available at the click of a button for all officers. Also, it will available at midnight — saving time, manpower and costs.

As part of this digital move, senior officers decided to do something unique - pay tribute to the man who started it all. “The police notice system was started by a British officer S.M. Edwardes, who also served as the Commissioner of Police for Mumbai from 1909 to 1916. He needed a system to save time and trouble for divisions and adopted it from the system existing in London,” informed DD Padsalgikar, Commissioner of Police.

As the notice mentions, Edwardes explains the need for an organised information collection and distribution system during his tenure. He says “Prior to this date, when a case of theft occurred, the first duty of the inspector, in whose jurisdiction it took place, was to prepare in his own hands, thirty or forty notings for dispatch to the other police stations in the city, much valuable time was thus wasted and when the notings were ready, several constables had to be released from their proper duties to act as messengers.”

Till June, the same system was followed except that a lot of other changes had been added and many more copies had to be printed and published. “Edwardes thought of doing something to save time for officers and it was a novel move in that time. So, it was only imperative we pay him a tribute regarding this,” he said.