GPS Tracking ROI

Suspect’s car had tracking device

Man arraigned on drug charges believed to have been involved in slaying

By JAMIE SATTERFIELD, satterfield@knews.com
April 13, 2007

It couldn’t save Michael Grimes, but it might well bring his killer to justice.

Toby Tobias Senter’s car had been secretly outfitted with a tracking device when he allegedly either committed or participated in the slaying Sunday of a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent’s nephew, a federal prosecutor revealed Thursday at a hearing in U.S. District Court. Read the rest of the GPS tracking non-success story here:

We talk quite a bit here in the GPS Tracking ROI blog about fighting crime with GPS. Many law enforcement agencies and private investigators have already found the advantages of keeping track of suspects via GPS “bugs” on private vehicles. The law, in most states even allows such surveillance without a court order, and in cases like this sad one it probably would have been easy enough to get a court order … there was plenty of evidence to show the suspected drug dealer was a truly bad guy.

The long and the short of this case so far is that TBI (Tennessee Bureau of Investigation) agents knew they had a truly bad guy in their sights and decided to use a GPS device to track his movements. They used an off-the-shelf device popular with many law enforcement agencies and it certainly appears that they now have evidence from that device that will solve a grizzly murder and convict the guilty party. So why didn’t GPS save a life instead of just supporting a conviction? That boils down to the big question everyone who is thinking about GPS tracking has to answer … live GPS tracking versus passive passive GPS tracking.

Live GPS Tracking gives the user … law enforcement, business owner, regulatory agency or concerned parent a near real-time view of what a tracked individual is doing. The advantages are clear, because if it becomes obvious that the subject is doing something illegal, immoral or fattening the monitoring user can take advantage of the knowledge to intervene. The pros and cons boil down this way:

Live GPS Tracking Pros:

• Get the position, speed, etc. of the subject within seconds (actual time depends upon the system)
• Guide live surveillance officers, supervisors, etc. to the vicinity
• Know the answer to queries from supervisors, customers, etc. where the subject is at all times

Live GPS Tracking Cons:

• Cost to send the data from the subject to the using agency … cell phone, satellite, etc.
• Cost to have someone “watching the screen” to act upon the live data … otherwise “live” aspect is wasted.
• Units are harder to hide … require an antenna for the data link that sends back the location data.

Passive GPS Tracking gives the user several different advantages. There are users who insist that passive won’t meet their needs … and for some, this is true, but when you are trying to manage a business, monitor adherence to routes, stop times and hours on the labor clock, passive may be the way to go.

Passive GPS Tracking Pros:

• Usually cheaper to implement
• Never and charges to get the data back to the monitoring site
• Units don’t require and communication connection .. easy to hide and harder to detect

Passive GPS Tracking Cons:

• Always “after the fact”. Useless for intervention
• Provides to information to users who need an answer now, rather than later
• Not suitable for an activity that has to be managed ‘now’. Data is historic only.

There’s the situation in a nutshell. When thinking about what basic type of system you might want to use, be sure to consider first just what you wish to accomplish, then decide on your budget.

In my years in this field I have seen as many failed GPS implementations as I have seen successful ones. The failures were almost always caused by folks selecting the wrong tool for the job at hand, or using the right tool in the wrong way. Costs are seldom the make or break factor, failure to think through the requirements almost always is. Perhaps the TBI would have thought this one out differently? Or perhaps not … you comments are always welcome.