GPS for Police — Is It Always Bad?
Better dispatch system in store for local police
By Chris Paschenko
DAILY Staff Writer
chris@decaturdaily.com · 340-2442
Decatur police dispatchers should soon see on their computer screens the closest officer to an emergency call.
Police Chief Joel Gilliam said a federal grant obtained by U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Huntsville, allowed the City Council to fund technology upgrades that will place automatic vehicle locators in 60 patrol cars.
Gilliam said October is the target date for bringing the system online, allowing dispatchers to immediately know which officer is closest to a reported robbery, burglary or other emergency.
“They’ll no longer have to get on the radio and ask which officer is closer to a call,” Gilliam said…. Read full article here:
Here’s a news item that should make Decatur area residents happy. There are a lot of police departments resisting GPS technology … and if you read my story about Hoboken, NJ a day or so ago it’s easy to see why.
GPS vehicle tracking could catch a patrol officer doing the wrong thing … if, in fact, any are doing the wrong thing in Decatur. But GPS tracking in police fleets can do so much more.
First: Officer Safety: An officer on patrol is supposed to keep his/her dispatcher constantly informed as to actions and whereabouts. But with GPS tracking the dispatcher will know before the officer says anything … even in emergencies when the officer hasn’t time to say much … or has a gun to his or her head. I’m not sure how many civilian departments have procedures like we set up with the Air Force missile field forces, but if you take a security officer hostage in that system, there are things he/she can do with the patrol vehicle that will alert the dispatcher right away … and the captor will never know…. Until the rescue forces show up.
Second: Officer Liability: We’ve all seen the accident reports where a tragic crash between a police vehicle and an innocent civilian occurs. Police departments try to prevent them in every way possible, but they happen. Usually the aftermath works out to something like the officer stating “I made a full stop at the light and then pulled into the intersection with my emergency lights flashing.†Someone on the other side is liable to counter, “The officer had all his or her lights turned off and flew into the intersection against the light at 90 miles per hour.†Well, we know both stories can’t be true … so is it the officer’s account, the witness’s or does the actual truth lie somewhere in between? With a GPS tracking unit, especially one with free monitor inputs, the investigators would know exactly the speed of the patrol vehicle, how close the patrol car came to stopping and if the lights were on or off. Could easily save a career … or millions in city liability.
Third: Crime statistics: Every law enforcement agency busier than Mayberry’s has, at the least a pin map on the wall with recent crime and accident statistics. A great deal of effective law enforcement strategy can be built off fighting crime and accidents by location. But someone has to write down the specific location of every accident, every burglary, every traffic stop and then someone has to spend a heck of a lot of time putting pins in the map. With GPS tracking the stops are already recorded electronically and an officer can easily take a dump of the data in spreadsheet format, or import the data directly to an electronic map and get more, and more accurate data quickly.
Fourth: frequency congestion: this advantage ties direct to the first two. If you’ve never spent a couple hours listening to police radio I advise you to, as general education. The amount of calls that account for about 80% of the voice traffic are all unnecessary. Take the city of Colorado Springs as an example: the three most common calls are:
â€What’s your -20†from the dispatcher …an attempt by the dispatcher to keep a mental map of each car’s location,
“Officer safetyâ€, a prearranged “are you OK?†code between the distpacher and the officer that has to be made by the disapatcher any thime s/he hasn’t heard from one of the officers within a fixed amount of time.
Time hacks: Every assignment, report or call for directions is followed with a 4 digit representation of the current time. Why? To record the time of every action on a voice record. Essential, but certainly a really prime candidate to be recorded silently.
Frequency congestion is a big problem with many departments. Automated vehicle location (AVL), GPS tracking of patrol vehicles can often cost far, far less than adding a radio frequency to the network.
