Police Organization Wants Cop-Spotting Dropped From Waze App

An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports on a request from the US National Sheriffs' Association, which "wants Google to block its crowd-sourced traffic app Waze from being able to report the position of police officers, saying the information is putting officer's lives at risk." From the article: "'The police community needs to coordinate an effort to have the owner, Google, act like the responsible corporate citizen they have always been and remove this feature from the application even before any litigation or statutory action,' AP reports Sheriff Mike Brown, the chairman of the NSA's technology committee, told the association's winter conference in Washington....Brown called the app a 'police stalker,' and said being able to identify where officers were located could put them at personal risk. Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, said his members had concerns as well. 'I can think of 100 ways that it could present an officer-safety issue,' Pasco said. 'There's no control over who uses it. So, if you're a criminal and you want to rob a bank, hypothetically, you use your Waze.'"

Comments

Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men?

[ihtoit]

Its the cops' job to put themselves into "dangerous" situations in order to protect the public.

What a load of bollocks. IT IS NOT a cops job to put his own life on the line to protect ANY member of the public. HIS JOB is to uphold the Law UP TO the point where he knowingly puts his own life in danger - at which point, his own life becomes his single priority.

YOU DO NOT have the right to be protected by anybody else. Your own personal safety is your own personal problem. Should you choose to employ someone else to protect you, they do so on the understanding between you, which usually precludes them taking a bullet for you and remains within the letter of the Law.