Calcutta's new police chief Rajeev Kumar told his officers on his first day as commissioner that the traffic cop on the road was "the face of the force" and he should be more active.
At the stroke of 11am, Kumar signed a document, shook hands with predecessor Surajit Kar Purkayastha and formally took charge of the commissioner's office on the first floor of the main building at Lalbazar.
He then went into a huddle with the divisional deputy commissioners, joint commissioners and additional commissioners, followed by another meeting with officers of the traffic department.
The new police chief, who was briefed about the "prevailing issues" in each of the eight divisions, rolled out an advisory for the traffic police - from "counselling" bikers without helmets to installing GPS devices on the trauma care Karma ambulances.
The meeting had started with a PowerPoint presentation on enforcement statistics by the deputy commissioner (traffic), but the focus of the discussion soon shifted to a "new mode" of enforcing traffic rules.
The sources said Kumar asked traffic officers to adopt a three-stage strategy of tackling young motorbike riders without helmets - send the offender back home to wear a helmet, summon his parents to the local police station or traffic guard and, finally, prosecute if he continues to commit the offence.
An officer quoted Kumar as saying: "It does not look good when helmet-less bikers speed past policemen on roads... it creates a bad impression."
He also laid out a clear-cut rule for anyone riding with more than one adult on pillion: get the extra person off.
A section of officers Metro spoke to doubted the feasibility of the new mode of enforcement. "The number of such cases is quite high.... Are we expected to summon the guardians of each of them to the police stations and track whether they are repeating the offence?" an officer said.
Kumar, the sources said, also stressed the need to reduce the reaction time of trauma-care ambulances to a road accident. He referred to a recent instance of an ambulance taking two hours to take an accident victim to a hospital.
Additional commissioner of police Vineet Goyal, who also joined Calcutta police from the CID on Wednesday, has been given charge of the traffic department.
