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Ford Develops a Way To Monitor Police Driving
cartechboy writes Sometimes you wonder, "Who's watching the police?" Well, now it appears everyone can as Ford has developed a way to track how the police drive. The automaker has announced a new telematics system for police cars that will keep tabs on the cops while they are driving, tracking their behavior in real time. The system will be able to tell what speed the police offers are traveling, whether they're wearing their seat belts, and where they're driving. The idea behind this system is to improve fleet management with a side benefit of creating a degree of transparency to improve public trust.
I just got a message from the future!
It read: ...and the police have been using this system for several years without a problem. Why not apply it to the general public for the sake of safety...
It's greatly tempting, when replying to slashdot comments, to find something to be contrary about, and argue forever.
Like that there are more shitty cops than we collectively like to acknowledge, or that, systemically, these kinds of measures just cause bad apples to be sneakier.
But the reality is that you're right. Transparency measures don't have to fix everything to be a good idea. There don't need to be a strong super-majority of flawless police to appreciate that most are just people doing their best. This is the only attitude that has any hope of working to a future where no one distrusts cops.
Years and years ago while working 3rd shift in college I stepped out for a smoke. Two cops, no lights/sirens, lined up at a stop light in the deserted 4-lane manufacturing district street. Both of them waited for the light to turn green, and buried the pedal. At the next stop light, both cops hit their red and blue lights and did a high speed U-turn. They raced all the way up to the original stop light and then drove off at more acceptable speeds.
I ask the other smokers what the heck that was and their response was, "They do that every night."
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
"We apologize, but it seems that the system was malfunctioning between the times of 7pm and 11pm last night. This was a temporary outage, but sadly the history relevant to the event in question was lost. We greatly regret the losses incurred by the families attending the bat mitzvah, and we promise that our standard investigative procedures will determine whether there is any culpability by the officers. Pending the results of the investigation, our officers have been placed on paid leave, as they have suffered tremendous trauma due to the tragic situation."
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Over a decade ago, Siemens offered a system that offered all of this. It would automatically alert dispatch if a vehicle left a specified area, the shotgun was dismounted, lights were on, vehicle was exceeding a certain speed without lights on, etc... I worked with the public transit version which had similar features, but the local PD was there with us for quite a bit evaluating how we were using it to possibly start using it on their fleet. This was in 2004.
I'm sorry, $5 a month (the Progressive Snapshot thing) discount on what is typically a $100+ monthly payment is not worth them tracking my driving habits.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Wait... what the fuck good will it do?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Sure, either that or reckless driving.
Police generally have a track or other private area to train on. Public roads aren't it.
It won't bring down insurance rates because the police unions will never allow it to be implemented. It's not like there was a technical hurdle to gathering this data before and Ford just 'solved' the problem, the issue is that the public employees that are supposed to enforce the law increasingly see themselves as above the law.
Enigma
It's called vehicle tracking, and the devices I was working with ten years ago had arrays of discrete (on/off), continuous (analog) and data inputs you could wire up to anything and the state would be relayed back every few seconds over a cellular data link. For example some police departments equip cruisers with shotguns mounted in the trunk. Put a switch on the shotgun mount and as soon as an officer takes the shotgun out of the rack an alarm goes of back at HQ and the crusier's position is marked on a map.
You can use the inputs on those units for anything. Put the same unit in a snow plow and connect the discrete input to a switch that is activated whenever the plow is lowered. Collect the GPS fixes where the plow is down, put them on a map and bingo, you have a map of the streets you've plowed.
What you do with the inputs is limited only by your imagination. You could put a switch in all the seats and you'd know if the crusier was transporting anyone, or when an officer exited the vehicle. Mount accelerometers in the vehicle and wire them to the analog inputs and you know when the vehicle is maneuvering aggresively. It's not engineering, it's Arduino style inventing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I worked in IT for a police force for a time. These systems have already been in place for more than 10 years, Ford is just making them an option on the Interceptor rather than requiring an after-market solution. And yes, police do get in shit for going 50kph over the speed limit without their siren on. Not that that stopped some of them.