Bangalore police want to fight crime with Periscope

Periscope seems to be everywhere these days, giving folks an easy way to stream everyday life to anyone willing to watch it. For some people and organizations, including Android Authority, Periscope is a way to reach out to fans and share an inside look at events and the like. For others, Periscope is for sharing streaming images of their food, letting people watch them brush their teeth, and all other matters of, well… idiocy. For Bangalore’s police department? They are hoping it can be turned into a crime fighting tool.

Police commissioner MN Reddi says that they plan to embrace Periscope by starting small and livestreaming police press conferences to any interested in watching. Beyond this, however, the commissioner is hoping that they can eventually get to the point where willing citizens use the platform to record crimes in progress. Essentially someone at the police station would monitor these special Periscope feeds and would react to them by dispatching an officer, etc.

While an odd sounding idea, Bangalore has already had a great deal of success embracing Twitter with many residents of the city more than willing to send alerts and complaints to the police via tweets. This is just the next evolution for the city’s plans to use social media to improve their police force. Of course the idea of every citizen having the power to act as CCTV camera for catching crime might seem a little discomforting to some. Considering slow mobile broadband speeds and limited data for many smartphone users in the city, it’s also probably a little too ambitious at this point. Still, we have to commend the city’s police force for thinking outside of the box.

What do you think of the idea? A great one, a potentially over invasive one that will infringe on privacy? Share your thoughts in the comments!