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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.
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.
The differences between applying this to the police and to the general public are that the police are public servants (they work for the public) and they are endowed with special powers above and beyond a "normal citizen" (arrest, ability to use force in some cases, etc). They do a valuable service, but this power can also lead to abuses. Making police activities more transparent helps assure the public that their powers aren't being abused. This justification wouldn't apply to your average citizen. (This isn't to say that the police wouldn't love to apply it to everyone. Just that any reasoning to that end would be flawed.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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
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.
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