What Were They Thinking? GPS Is A Tool, Not A Panacea
is dwelling at night, etc. Mother’s Murder Raises GPS Tracking Questions
By Kristin Smith
First Coast News
BAKER COUNTY, FL — Family and friends of Cindy Below say they’re angry at the justuce (sic) system tonight.
This comes after the shooting death of a young mother - a murder family members say they saw coming.
Police arrested the baby’s father, Bobbie Dean Dressel, Monday night in Georgia.
He’s accused of shooting Cynthia Lynn Below and her step-father Malcom Johns.
The shootings happened in Macclenny, in Baker County.
At the time, Dressel was wearing a court-ordered ankle bracelet put in place to help protect Below.
But now, there are now (sic) a lot of questions about these monitoring bracelets.
This story of course makes me very sad. It also makes me more than a little mad as well. This is a case where the law enforcement officials were at least trying to do their duty using technology to aid them, but they set up conditions of use that virtually made failure a certainty.
The suspect, know to be violent and known to be stalking his former companion was fitted with a GPS tracking bracelet and permit to roam at will provided he didn’t come within 1,000 feet of his intended victim. Well he apparently came up to the 1001 foot point, disabled the bracelet and then charged in and killed the woman and her step-dad. The monitoring company apparently alerted the sheriff with seconds and deputies responded … but folks, 1,000 feet is not that great a distance. Any reasonably athletic man can cross that span of distance in a minute or two, an athlete or a man crazed with adrenaline in even less time.
It’s ludicrous to expect the system to respond at random in less than a minute. GPS tracking is an excellent tool for the monitoring of felons who are not known to be gunning for someone. A perpetrator, for example, who needs to be placed on house arrest to confine him to his dwelling at night, for example.
It’s just irrational and bordering on insanity to put a bracelet on the leg of a violent man and allow him to come with in a thousand feet of his target, at night, with police who knows how many minutes away. I love technology, but please, can we apply at least third-grade logic to the equation?