UDHAMPUR: Udhampur Police launched the first Mounted Police Squad in Jammu and Kashmir for crime control and maintenance of law and order in busy markets and By-lanes. Rajesh Kumar Yadav, Director, Sher-i-Kashmir Police Academy Udhampur was Chief Guest on the occasion, who flagged off the first ever Mounted squad of District Police Udhampur in the presence of Surinder Gupta,IPS, Inspector General of Police, Neeraj Kumar, IAS Deputy Commissioner, Udhampur and other prominent citizens and dignitaries of district Udhampur.
Udhampur police is initially going to deploy Mounted Police Squads in Udhampur town and the scheme, if succeeded, would be implemented in other busy towns, Hilly areas and the areas where the vehicular movement is not practically possible.
Unlike the traditional policing practices, Mounted Police Squad of Udhampur Police will perform its crime/L&O duties, mounted on horses well dressed in riding uniforms and equipped with L&O equipments/wireless sets/pistols and handy PA systems as per requirement. Because of their mobile mass and height advantage, Mounted Police is increasingly used in UK for crime prevention and high visibility policing roles like crowd control. The added height and visibility that the horses give their riders not only allow officers to observe a wider area, but it also allows people in the wider area to see the officers, which acts as a deterrence on the trouble makers besides help people to easily locate Mounted Police officers, when they need them.
It is commonly said that a mounted police officer is comparable to ten or more officers on foot during L&O situations.
The most visible duties of a mounted police officer are conducting patrols on horseback and assisting with crowd control at events. Mounted officers are very effective in crowd control roles.
Besides this, a ticketing system to check and control wrong parking was also launched by Udhampur Police which is going to be made operational w.e.f 25/11/2016, wherein the people doing wrong parking would be warned by announcements twice, through handy PA Systems issued to these Horse riders besides other police patrol teams, to take away their wrongly parked vehicles, followed by pasting a ticket designed by district police on their vehicle to face legal action accordingly.
This is a Joint effort of District Police Udhampur, District Administration Udhampur and Sher-i-Kashmir Police Academy Udhampur in the direction of a crime free society.
Appreciating the positive attitude of the General Public of Udhampur towards to various pro-active initiatives of Police like action against traffic rule violators to save innocent human lives etc., SSP assured them that similar initiatives would be taken in near future in coordination with the district administration towards curbing the menace of Drugs addiction and smuggling, Health/Sports club for the local youth, a well furnished press club for Udhampur district’s think tank, Cricket/Table tennis tourney etc. to bring the general public more and more closer to the Police, for collaborative initiatives towards a crime free society.