Visakhapatnam police urges people to use LHMS app when out of town

Are you going out during Covid-19? Or at a hospital affected with Covid-19? Here is an app by the Visakhapatnam police called Locked House Monitoring System (LHMS) to keep your house in a safe zone. There has been a rise in robbery cases in the city in the last few weeks. According to the police, at least 10-15 robbery cases have been reported in the last week in Kancharapalem, Gajuwaka, Bheemili and a few other areas in the city. While some robberies have happened when the owners were at home, few cases are when there was no one at home. Sources have said that due to many police officials being affected with Covid-19 and in quarantine, this has allowed the thieves to conduct some robberies and thefts.

Making efforts to control the robberies in the city, Visakhapatnam police have advised the citizens to install the LHMS app for safe travel.

What is Locked House Monitoring System (LHMS)?

It is a special app developed by the Andhra Pradesh Police to keep CCTV surveillance of the houses when the owners are out of town for a day or more. The homeowners in Visakhapatnam can download the LHMS AP Police app from the Google Play Store on their Android phones. Once they give their details like name and residential address, they would be given a unique ID indicating their successful registration. If the individual is going out of town, they should file a request in the app, indicating the number of days. The police would visit the house and install camera equipment. The total setup is linked to the owner’s phone and also to the Police Control Room

. “We would install a motion sensor camera. So any movement in front of the house will be recorded in the camera and an alert will be given to the control room. While many of them have requested for the camera setup during festival season when they are going out of town, in recent times, we have seen less response. We urge the citizens to install the app when they are in quarantine or away from home for few days,” ACP Sravan Kumar.

According to the police, while more robberies have been reported in the last few weeks, it is learned that with the increase in Covid-19 cases in jail, many culprits who were booked under petty cases were given bail. These culprits are suspected to be involved in robberies in the city.