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Norfolk Police Officers To Be Tagged To Improve Response Times
Police in Norfolk, England already have tracking units, The Automatic Vehicle Location System, installed in their cars that allow a control room to track their exact locations. Later this year a similar system will be attached to individual police radios to allow controllers to monitor the position of every frontline officer. Combined with equipment that can pinpoint the locations of 999 callers, the system will allow the force to home in on "shouts" to within yards. The system also lets operators filter a map showing the location of its vehicles and constables to reveal only those with the skills needed for a specific incident, like the closest officer with silver bullets during a werewolf attack.
There wolf... There castle
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
like the closest officer with silver bullets during a werewolf attack.
Silver bullets don't actually hurt werewolves. The only way we'll defeat them is by eliminating their source of power - the moon!
Hopefully this will bring some accountability. They can conceivable track the speed of police vehicles to make sure they are obeying traffic laws when not responding to an emergency. It can also be used to verify that an officer was where they were when they said they were there. Of course, this would only be affective if their friends back at the station weren't the ones monitoring.
That the tracking system is turn based and isometric.
I'm starting a pool on how soon devices that show you the nearest cops will be sold on eBay.
Who needs radar detectors if you have a live map with all cops clearly marked??
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
They already tried the system in Australia, but it failed because most people didn't want to dial 666 even if their life depended on it.
couldnt this go horribly wrong?
i know a guy who used to be a sniper and he said that he had to be extremely careful with communications devices for fear he could give up his position in the field. essentially the enemy could conceivably monitor for communications and determine general locations.
granted local police and the military are different. yet, couldnt a troublemaker get a hold of this information and use it to their advantage?
always mosh clockwise
Hopefully also useful for letting people know who was clobbering them.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
--
Yeah, I know it's a cliche. Actually, our local cops are at the diner, not the donut shop. But diners are a regional thing. Donut shops are pretty much worldwide.
The last time I wrote code, it was Morse
At least here in America (and I assume everywhere) they're suppose to call in for everything they do. It helps to track them, in case something happens.
If they're 10-6 McDonalds, either they're grabbing a bite to eat, or taking a shit.
If they're 10-7, they just went off-duty.
If they're 10-8, they just came back on duty.
There are some confusing ones. 10-9 may mean "please repeat", but 10-99 may mean "officer taken hostage".
Because of the inaccuracy of 10 codes (they mean different things in different places), they are suppose to be replaced by plain english phrases. 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina made it difficult for different departments to work together. What may be shots fired, victim needs medical attention, may mean routine traffic stop in another. If you're involved in a shooting, it'd be nice to get backup, rather than assume you're doing a route traffic stop.
10 codes were great for short messages to avoid congestion of common frequencies (like from all cars to dispatch), but now most departments are trunked, and the radios are much clearer. Another reason is so the person you're standing in front of doesn't know what you're talking about. Say you were taken hostage in a bank robbery, where the silent alarm wasn't it. It'd be simple to tell the robber "I need to check in, so dispatch doesn't worry." "Dispatch, I'm 10-99 at First National Bank.", and make it sound like you're just cashing a check. Now you've not given away your real intent (HELP!) and the robber thinks all is clear for a while until the SWAT team shows up.
Oh, did I digress? Sorry.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
This sounds like a job for Team America World Police
*grumbles* What did we do to deserve this? --Techwolf
This technology would destroy the plots of old TV shows like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_54_where_are_you. Hollywood would condemn it.
But we're all too young to have ever seen that TV show . . . aren't we?
On the other hand Hollywood celebrities might like the technology if someone could build scanners that spot police cars. If you read http://www.tmz.com/, you would know that those wacky celebrities always manage to bump into a cop while buying drugs, soliciting teenage whores, beating their spouses, etc.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
That's a met car, not a Norfolk car. Norfolk squad cars look like this: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2132/2279892412_ab358a0a60.jpg
Using the metric of 'how fast police get somewhere' to determine the quality of their service is asking for trouble. In fact, its asking for police to do shit like this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/7987832.stm
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
couldnt this go horribly wrong?
i know a guy who used to be a sniper and he said that he had to be extremely careful with communications devices for fear he could give up his position in the field. essentially the enemy could conceivably monitor for communications and determine general locations.
In the military, what you're describing is a problem for someone who's wanting to hide. It's under the category of "electronic warfare/signals intelligence". In that field, people are trained to scan the radio spectrum, isolate different entities communicating, try to figure out who/what they are, and find their location (essentially through triangulation).*
For what you're describing, it wouldn't matter what communications devices the person is using because it's the transmission itself that is detected. It takes somewhat sophisticated equipment to do the radio location. One person doing it would have to be moving around to get multiple fixes (assuming they could isolate the police officer's transmissions they want) until they could get a location on the police officer. But since most police operate in the open it's probably easier to just look for the uniform. Additionally, most police carry and use radios anyway, so doing a radio fix on them would work even without the tech in the article.
However, the tech in the article could be open to hacking where someone gains access to the system that aggregates all the data and locations. That's new and interesting, but doing that hacking would require sophisticated equipment of its own.
* It's the psy-op guys who get to try and defeat these monitoring efforts by making fake broadcasts to appear to be a unit that's not there - fun stuff! Even one of the old original Battlestar Galactica series used something like this where Starbuck and Apollo make radio calls as if they were whole squadrons.
He's right, but military and police are two totally different worlds.
In 'The Field' the enemy is monitoring all kinds of communications. They have guards setup, probably scouts, sensors, etc.
In the domestic world, criminals rarely monitor anything beyond the end of their nose. Only a small percentage of criminals would be able to use this information to their advantage. The rest will continue to commit crimes and be caught, possibly more efficiently due to the new system described in the article.
The kinds of people who are listening to the police scanners or are willing to invest in the technology and skills required to use a system like this..well..the police don't often catch terrorists or smart criminals unless the criminals/terrorists seriously fuck up. Or confess.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I'm a serving Metropolitan (London) police officer and I think this is a great idea.
We've had tracking on our vehicles for a while now. It gives our supervisors/control room an accurate (as in, technology from 10 years ago accurate) image of our position. Apart from increasing efficiency when allocating calls based on distance and travel time, it's main use is for officer safety. If I push the little red button on my airwaves radio and, for whatever ever reason, I am unable to speak, the control room can dispatch units to my vehicles location.
Foot chases and 'hail downs' can mean I'm a long distance from my vehicle, or if I'm in a anti police estate and not at the location of my last call officers will have trouble locating me. The individual radio locater will be able to prevent this, and increase my personal safety and the safety of my fellow officers.
Of course, members of the public will only see this as a regulatory tool, because all officers hate their job and spend their time at Crispy Creme scoffing donuts. I don't think I've had a day shift so far when I'm not busting my ass for the full 12 hours; dealing with emotional/violent/mentally unstable people, dealing with legal problems and keeping up with a mountain of written work.
What a non story. The TETRA radios that all emergency services personnel have in the UK all have ARL capabilities. What this REALLY means is that Airwave (the company that runs the TETRA system) is finally allowing this ARL to be emitted. In Norfolk. A rural county with not many TETRA radios in it. Not much control channel contention then.
The REAL news will be when they (officially) switch it on for London. Then we will see whether the TETRA system can cope or not.
BTW, you can't track the ARL as the SDSes that are being used are encrypted (as is the voice traffic).
These upgrades to the Airwave (Tetra based radio/phone) termnials is clearly well overdue, as detecting the correct location is obviously a problem in this article.
The police response car shown is from the Metropolitan Police (i.e. London, not Norfolk), and the Bedfordshire Police logo is from, er, Bedfordshire (again, not Norfolk!).
On a serious note, the Airwave network which is now in use by all forces has the capability to carry GPS (and other data like this) over the network alongside the voice data, and most of the handheld terminals (radios) have the option to have a GPS module added. Most forces have been saying they will roll them out, but of course won't as it costs money, until other forces get it and put them to shame.
An ex-UK-cop (who quit because I was disgusted with the current UK "terrorism" laws and other laws taking away our rights, and the way we as police were being asked to implement them).
Living in Norwich, I found it extremely amusing that the only Doughnut shop listed from the above search on googlemaps,is in, wait for it,Wymondham! For those not in the know, the Norfolk Constabulary HQ is in, yep, you guessed it - Wymondham!! http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=DoughnutORdonutshopinNorwich http://www.norfolk.police.uk/article.cfm?artID=6439&catID=729&bctrail=0
I am not sure exactly how the hell a police officer with reflective lettings driving a white with red and yellow (reflective again) markings and more bells and whistes then a carnival ride is supposed to be secret.
Criminals aint' all that high tech. If criminals were smart, they wouldn't be criminals. Oh and if some criminals do come to rely on tracking patrols then they will be easy marks for arrest teams. nobody says that ALL cops will wear trackers. Patrol cops are a deterrent, if a criminals spots one and does not commit a crime because of it then the job is done. The best cop deters crime, not solve them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
More to the point, this being Norfolk (right here, where I am), the job of tracking the entire county police force could be done by a single suitably-inclined human without computer assistance. (Someone with the right sort of Aspergers Syndrome, say.)
For example, in the small hours of the morning, (I have been reliably informed by a serving member of the Norfolk Constabulary) there are precisely two officers on patrol.
It's never so bad that it can't get worse.
One big problem faced around the world is actually identifying where something is. Addresses postcodes / zipcodes are not perfect they are quirky and arbitrary and worst of all usually require some form of license to use. Knowing the GPS Latitude and Longitude you can pinpoint anywhere on the planet. but they are hard to remember, if you know them at all.
There are some systems available that can solve this some are patented or otherwise closed to free use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash is an open system which encodes a latitude and longitude to a base 32 number (which is just an alphanumeric string). The longer the String the more precise the location is.
An unfortunate drawback is the length of the code is perhaps a little too long to remember easily and be useful.
However a shorter code could be used based on look up tables. kind of similar to http://xkcd.com/426/ you could define an area by the bounding box its contained within. If your within the USA for example you wouldnt need to find the approximate location of the USA since thats already known the bounding area would be defined by a bounding box of the nearest whole degree or a smaller fraction that completely encloses the area of interest. If the USA was still too large an area you could define an area such as california defining the bounding box as the latitudes and longitudes that completely enclose California a Neighboring state would use a similar bounding box which would overlap to a certain extent but it doesnt really matter that a place could be enclosed in two or more bounding boxes since you would use the one defined for your state. probably there is no need to define the bounding box greater than .01 of a degree and generally 0.1 degrees would be close enough.
This would then shorten the code to something most people can remember and keep it free since this concept is derived from the geohash algorithm I would expect it to be free to use by anyone who wishes to use it without payment.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
the thing I don't get is... why is this news? We already do do this.
999 calls are already pinpointed, either by EISEC address lookup, or mobile ellipse (unfortunately most mobiles don't give out the exact location, but it has to be inferred from mast/cell positions)
Officer handsets already return vehicle-location co-ordinates (depending on the handset, of course), but all Airwave (the UK's emergency service 'radio' network) handsets provide this.
As for 'officer emergency' issues, they have a red button on the handsets, press it, and it starts spamming out location packets and forces opens a channel to the control centre so an operator can hear everything that goes on.
Disclaimer: I write control centre software, including that used at neighbouring Suffolk Constabulary.
"... They are humans too. ..." [citation needed]