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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.
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.
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.
I once went to serve a search warrant with the local RCMP (they needed a consultant who could tell them if they found what they were looking for - 3DES SNK'd password files not exactly being in their training) and they called me to tell me where to meet them prior to the raid -- at the Tim Horton's.
I sat there planning a raid in the local Tim Horton's with them. It seemed surreal.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Better be careful there. If their tracking software tries to calculate the distance between vehicles there is potential for a divide by zero error in the vicinity of the donut shop.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.
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.
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.
They could put this in with Google maps....which would be cool. You see a large group of cop 'dots' in a group, you know THAT is the spot to go for doughnuts.
You see cop dots on the map along the highway...slow down or you'll get a ticket.
If you're a criminal, well, that ones obvious.
Interesting scenarios come to mind....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"... They are humans too. ..." [citation needed]