The Greater Chennai Police, a division of the Tamil Nadu Police, is the law enforcement agency for the city of Chennai in India and the surrounding area. The city police force is headed by a Commissioner of Police and the administrative control vests with the Tamil Nadu Home Department.^[1] There are four sub-divisions of the Greater Chennai Police, and 104 police stations. The city's traffic is managed by the Greater Chennai Traffic Police. Chennai is the first city in India to introduce e-Beat system used to measure the daily routine and performance of the police personnel.^[2][3]

In 1659, when Chennai (then called Madras) was just a group of fishing villages. Pedda Naik formed a group of peons to guard the town. By 1780 the post of Superintendent of Police was created to manage the markets. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British Raj in India formed the modern Madras Police as part of its reforms.^[4]

The Chennai City Traffic Police is a branch of the Greater Chennai Police, with the mission of regulating traffic in the city of Chennai. It was established in 1929 when the Police department was split into 3, namely, Law & Order, Crime and Traffic. As of 2011, the government merged Chennai Suburban Police with Chennai city police to form The Greater Chennai Police Commissionerate.^[5]

Additional Yellow Brigades & Blue Brigades motorcycles and patrol vehicles have been introduced in Greater Chennai. Each Yellow Brigade covers a distance of 2 km² approximately during daytime from 6 am to 9 pm. The Blue Brigade covers the same distance of 2 km² during nighttime from 11 pm to 6.30 am. The patrol vehicles covers an approximate distance of 3.2 km² each day. For patrol duty, 40 Jeeps have been provided equipped with police sirens, revolving lights, public address system, fire extinguisher, top search light, police display light and wireless communication system. The response time to control room calls has been brought down to 3–4 minutes. The Tamil Nadu Police claims that the crime rate in the Greater Chennai City has come down considerably after these initiatives.

The police force include 100 Hyundai Accent patrol cars that was donated by the Hyundai Motor Company, whose factory is located in Sriperumbudur, on the outskirts of the city. The cars are fitted with digital cameras, wireless communication devices and loudspeakers,^[6] making this the only police force in the country to use sedan patrol cars. Patrol cars have been provided to Greater Chennai Police. Hyundai donated Accent cars to Chennai Police, of which 75 were given to Law & Order, 21 to traffic department. The remaining 4 cars were incorporated into the Chief Minister's convoy.

The ranks, posts and designations of all police officers vary from state to state as law and order is a state matter. But, generally the following pattern is observed:^[7][8][9]

Gazetted Officers

Indian Police Service gazetted officers rank insignia^[10][11][12]

Insignia

Rank

Director General of Police

Additional Director General of Police[lower-alpha 1]

Inspector General of Police

Deputy Inspector General of Police

Senior Superintendent of Police[lower-alpha 2]

Superintendent of Police

Additional superintendent of police

Assistant Superintendent of Police

Assistant Superintendent of Police (Probationary for two years)

Assistant Superintendent of Police (Probationary for one year)

Abbreviation

DGP

ADGP

IGP

DIG

SSP

SP

Addl. SP

ASP

ASP

ASP

Note 1: The equivalent rank to the three-star ASP in State Police Services is the deputy superintendent of police (DSP/DySP), which is not a gazetted rank and contains the respective state police service's acronym in insignia, such as OPS for Odisha Police Service. Note 2: Commissioner of police is a post is held by different rank officers in different places. For example, it is held by DG rank officers only in Delhi and Mumbai; by Addl. DG rank officers in Pune, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Varanasi, Guwahati etc; by IG rank officers in Trivandrum, Gurgaon, Kochi, Coimbatore, Ludhiana, Madurai, Mysore etc; by DIG rank officers in Kozhikode, Howrah, Amravati, Mangaluru, Jalandhar, Warangal etc.

.

Non-gazetted officers

Indian Police non-gazetted officers rank insignia ^[13][14]

Insignia

No insignia

Rank

Inspector

Assistant inspector[lower-alpha 3]

Sub-inspector

Assistant sub-inspector

Head constable[lower-alpha 4]

Police Naik[lower-alpha 5]

Police constable

Abbreviation

INSP/PI

API

SI

ASI

HC

SC

PC

Note: Colour pattern and size of chevrons may vary according to the different rules of several distinct Indian State Police services.

Following are the new list of delimitation police stations within the jurisdiction of Chennai Metropolitan Police.^[15]