Monday, June 29, 2009

Chennai's finest

It has been almost three years since Chennai's police force was gifted these prowl cars by Hyundai Motors. Until then, the standard vehicle for the police was the Willys Jeep, or something similar. But somehow, the abiding image of cops seems to be one associated with red-white-blue lights, a low sedan with snazzy decals screeching up to the scene of action and the Chennai Metropolitan Police was nowhere in the picture on this one. In fact, with the introduction of these sedans in 2006, the CMP reportedly became the first police department in the country to use sedans.

One hundred of these were provided to the city's police force; 72 were given to the law-and-order wing, 25 to the traffic police and the rest were retained for the chief minister's convoy. They were supposed to be driven by officers of the rank of at least sub-inspector - but I suspect that the novelty having worn off, the sub-inspectors would rather have someone else drive the car these days while they call out the warnings on their hailers!

4 comments:

Hobbes said...

some politician chap would've gone abroad, been fascinated by such cars for the policia elsewhere and immediately ordered 100 ...
All our money right !!!
Jai Ho !

Cheers

Shantaram said...

@ Hobbes: Hmm... at least Chennai got bragging rights out of it!

RiverMaker said...

Hyundai donated them. It was a great move on their part. Accent was being phased out.

Shantaram said...

@ RiverMaker: Yes, that was a good PR move - and it hasn't backfired on them, anyway!