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Social media helping authorities to tackle crime, emergencies

SINGAPORE — The Government will continue to involve the community in crime fighting and emergency response by using social media to facilitate the crowdsourcing of information, which proved useful in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bomb attacks in 2013, the House heard yesterday.

SINGAPORE — The Government will continue to involve the community in crime fighting and emergency response by using social media to facilitate the crowdsourcing of information, which proved useful in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bomb attacks in 2013, the House heard yesterday.

One of the Singapore Civil Defence Force’s (SCDF) plans involving the community this year is a pilot initiative called Save a Life, Senior Minister of State (Home Affairs and Foreign Affairs) Masagos Zulkifli said during the Ministry of Home Affairs’ Committee of Supply debate in Parliament.

The initiative aims to train, equip and organise a network of community responders who are able to effectively react to cardiac-arrest cases, he said.

The pilot will be launched in six constituencies — Bedok, Bukit Panjang, Choa Chu Kang, Pasir Ris West, Radin Mas and Tampines West. It is expected to be rolled out in all constituencies by end-2018.

The SCDF, working with the Health Ministry, will train a pool of community responders to administer cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and operate automated external defibrillators (AEDs). To make them more accessible, the AEDs will be installed in lift lobbies every two to three blocks in the pilot constituencies.

The SCDF, together with the police, will also launch the pilot Neighbourhood Active Responder Programme (NEAR) in Tampines East and Tampines West, Mr Masagos said.

Under NEAR, volunteers will be trained to respond to residential fires and perform first aid. Using bicycles fitted with first-aid kits, AEDs, fire extinguishers and smoke evacuation hoods, NEAR volunteers will also patrol their neighbourhoods on weekends, while keeping a lookout for emergencies, suspicious characters and criminal activity.

Second Minister for Home Affairs S Iswaran, who also spoke during the debate, noted that through the Community Policing Units, members of the public have partnered with the police to perform frontline policing duties. The units come under the Neighbourhood Policing Centres (NPCs).

The police and traffic police have set up the CrimeStopper and E-Feedback on Road Users online portals respectively, through which the public can provide immediate information on crime and traffic violations.

Mr Iswaran said the number of reports received through CrimeStopper significantly increased by 63.2 per cent last year to 1,832 cases, from 1,121 in 2013. Since last December, the traffic police have received almost 100 videos of traffic violations.

Mr Iswaran said community policing has helped curb illegal moneylending activities. For example, the Sembawang NPC worked with Nee Soon Town Council to train conservancy workers to look out for loan-shark runners and other illicit activities in the community. Their efforts led to a 67.8 per cent decline in the number of unlicensed moneylending cases last year.

“Community policing has been the cornerstone of our policing strategy for the past 30 years,” he said, adding that social media’s crowdsourcing capabilities had been very helpful to the police in their investigative work.

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