Norfolk Police Officers To Be Tagged To Improve Response Times 150
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.
Great (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Watching the watchers... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully also useful for letting people know who was clobbering them.
Re:Pfft (Score:2, Insightful)
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Brought to you by the same folks who created the "any" key
Re:Reports indcate... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah. More like "Syndicate: Surveillance". Complete with an advanced version of the persuadotron.
Goodhart's law strikes again (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Real world learning from video games? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Location issues currently (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
Re:Insert Donut Shop Joke Here (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Real world learning from video games? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [o2.com] (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.