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.
Sounds like a great plan (Score:5, Interesting)
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??
Re:Real world learning from video games? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:Sounds good... (Score:1, Interesting)
If an officer is injured and can't coherently give his location, they can still find him and give him the aid that might save his life. I just hope that they can make the system really damned secure so that a criminal can't break into the system and use it to target officers.
I'd like to see this extended to fire fighters as well.
Re:Sounds good... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Insert Donut Shop Joke Here (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Real world learning from video games? (Score:4, Interesting)
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, for one, welcome.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Police (finally) switch on AVL in their radios! (Score:2, Interesting)
What a non story. The TETRA radios that all emergency services personnel have in the UK all have ARL capabilities. What this REALLY means is that Airwave (the company that runs the TETRA system) is finally allowing this ARL to be emitted. In Norfolk. A rural county with not many TETRA radios in it. Not much control channel contention then.
The REAL news will be when they (officially) switch it on for London. Then we will see whether the TETRA system can cope or not.
BTW, you can't track the ARL as the SDSes that are being used are encrypted (as is the voice traffic).
Location issues currently (Score:2, Interesting)
These upgrades to the Airwave (Tetra based radio/phone) termnials is clearly well overdue, as detecting the correct location is obviously a problem in this article.
The police response car shown is from the Metropolitan Police (i.e. London, not Norfolk), and the Bedfordshire Police logo is from, er, Bedfordshire (again, not Norfolk!).
On a serious note, the Airwave network which is now in use by all forces has the capability to carry GPS (and other data like this) over the network alongside the voice data, and most of the handheld terminals (radios) have the option to have a GPS module added. Most forces have been saying they will roll them out, but of course won't as it costs money, until other forces get it and put them to shame.
An ex-UK-cop (who quit because I was disgusted with the current UK "terrorism" laws and other laws taking away our rights, and the way we as police were being asked to implement them).
As others said, bit different (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not sure exactly how the hell a police officer with reflective lettings driving a white with red and yellow (reflective again) markings and more bells and whistes then a carnival ride is supposed to be secret.
Criminals aint' all that high tech. If criminals were smart, they wouldn't be criminals. Oh and if some criminals do come to rely on tracking patrols then they will be easy marks for arrest teams. nobody says that ALL cops will wear trackers. Patrol cops are a deterrent, if a criminals spots one and does not commit a crime because of it then the job is done. The best cop deters crime, not solve them.
Re:Real world learning from video games? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
better identifications of locations (Score:3, Interesting)
One big problem faced around the world is actually identifying where something is. Addresses postcodes / zipcodes are not perfect they are quirky and arbitrary and worst of all usually require some form of license to use. Knowing the GPS Latitude and Longitude you can pinpoint anywhere on the planet. but they are hard to remember, if you know them at all.
There are some systems available that can solve this some are patented or otherwise closed to free use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash [wikipedia.org] is an open system which encodes a latitude and longitude to a base 32 number (which is just an alphanumeric string). The longer the String the more precise the location is.
An unfortunate drawback is the length of the code is perhaps a little too long to remember easily and be useful.
However a shorter code could be used based on look up tables. kind of similar to http://xkcd.com/426/ [xkcd.com] you could define an area by the bounding box its contained within. If your within the USA for example you wouldnt need to find the approximate location of the USA since thats already known the bounding area would be defined by a bounding box of the nearest whole degree or a smaller fraction that completely encloses the area of interest. If the USA was still too large an area you could define an area such as california defining the bounding box as the latitudes and longitudes that completely enclose California a Neighboring state would use a similar bounding box which would overlap to a certain extent but it doesnt really matter that a place could be enclosed in two or more bounding boxes since you would use the one defined for your state. probably there is no need to define the bounding box greater than .01 of a degree and generally 0.1 degrees would be close enough.
This would then shorten the code to something most people can remember and keep it free since this concept is derived from the geohash algorithm I would expect it to be free to use by anyone who wishes to use it without payment.
Re:Location issues currently (Score:3, Interesting)
I do pay attention.
I do listen for the radar detector to go off....and of course, I keep up with road conditions with the old CB radio.
Believe it or not, the CB works fantastic...these days, I know where the cops are WAY before the detector goes off about 98% of the time.
Sometimes, old tech is hard to beat.