The ‘Police Park’ at Taramani has become the cynosure of all eyes.
On a pleasant evening when News Today visited the police station, M S Bhaskar, Taramani Law and Order Inspector, was busy showing visitors and mediapersons around the small park the policemen built on the station campus.
“Do you like the park?” he asked a boy who was running up and down. “Don’t be afraid. You can speak to me,” he told the child, who was apparently a petitioner’s son. The boy mumbled a “yes” before dashing off.
The Taramani police station has been creating a buzz after the personnel there gave it a complete makeover, the highlight being the garden they put together using reusable items. The garden, which also includes a lotus pond and plethora of plants, has been named as ‘police park’.
Speaking to this paper, Inspector Bhaskar said, “The initiative began after City Commissioner Viswanathan visited the station and advised us to make the place look even better and people friendly.” But they went a step ahead and made it ‘children friendly.’
“Parents often tell their children that we are ‘uniformed terrorists’. If kids don’t eat, the elders threaten them by saying ‘we will call police’ and ‘police will shoot you’. We want to change that. Nobody should be afraid to come to the station,” he said.
“It took us a couple of weeks to put this together. Everything is made of recycled stuff. The public helped us in renovating the station, and a person called Issac from ‘Friends of police’ came forward to help with the gardening. All we did was to get the seeds and saplings. A gardener helped in setting up the whole place. He comes and inspects it once in a while as well. The green mats laid outside is what I found unused from a football stadium I visited recently,” he smiles.
Speaking about the choice of plants he said, “Apart from vegetable plants, we wanted aesthetic, medicinal and decorative ones too. We have also built a lotus pond with fish in it so that the visitors feel calm and in the midst of nature. Maintaining the garden has become a hobby for all of us here. There is no strict schedule as such. We take turns to maintain it as and when we want.”
The building has been whitewashed and has a ‘smart pole,’ which is a long pole with a Public Announcement System and cameras fixed on it, and it even functions without electricity. There are six CCTV cameras installed at the premises.
“We have chairs for all visitors and cushioned ones for the elderly. There is drinking water, bathrooms and a resting room for police who stay for long hours and even an inverter facility,” he said.
The efforts have paid off said the policemen. “Now children in the neighbourhood call us ‘Police uncle,’ one girl even called up the station to report her quarreling parents,” said the Inspector proudly.