The Commissioner of Police in Abia State, Kenechukwu Onwuemelie, has said the command will deploy modern digital technology to enhance security in the state.

Mr Onwuemelie said this on Friday during an interactive session with journalists at the end of the State Security Meeting in Nvosi, Isiala South Local Government Area.

He said that the decision formed part of the robust measures put in place by the state government to consolidate on the efforts made in the fight against crime in Abia.

“These days, there’s hardly any crime you commit without applying  technology, so the same way technologies can be applied or leveraged to deter as well as detect crimes and criminals. So, part of the robust measures that have been put in place is the use of technologies going forward.

“The state is already installing CCTV in certain places and is going to be doing that strategically. Communication is going to be improved. There is so much that is going to be improved, even reportage, in terms of distress calls and so on,” the police boss said.

He stated that technological innovations would be leveraged to enhance the communication infrastructure among the security agencies to facilitate crime prevention.

According to him, it will enable security agencies to get relevant and prompt information about any criminal activity and apply appropriate disruptive measures to apprehend the criminals.

Mr Onwuemelie said that the Operation Crush Initiative, which is a multi-agency security initiative of the Abia government, had been a success.

He said: “Operation Crush is doing so well. As a matter of fact, part of why we are seeing what we recently experienced is also because of the application of the measures coming through Operation Crush.”

He said that the state security meeting was focused on a review of the security situation in Abia, with particular attention to the period from December till date.

“We had a review of the security situation and, of course, we observed that the situation is stable and has improved, notwithstanding the fact that recently we experienced some pockets of issues around kidnapping,” he said.

Mr Onwuemelie further said that the session centred on deliberations on issues of security going forward.

He further said that it was expected that the measures initiated during the session would further improve the security situation in Abia.

On the kidnap of the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academics) of the Abia State University, Uturu, Prof. Godwin Emezue, he said that concerted efforts were being made by security agencies to ensure that he would be “rescued and released.’’

(NAN)