Using Technology In Policing

In recent years, technology has been making significant advancements that makes complex task easier as well as more effective. In a time in policing where budgets are shrinking, the police has benefited from technological advancements that allows police administrators to create effective patrol strategies that can make full use of the department’s resources by using technology to create efficacy, which is necessary when trying to reduce crime in modern policing. Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) technologies, self-driven patrol vehicles, automated number plate recognition, Project 54 technology and Through-The-Wall Surveillance (TWS) can help make police patrol more effective. In many cases, the reasons as to why police patrols cannot be
effective is due to a lack of resources that often refers to understaffed police departments. However, research has showed that a large amount of the officers’ time is uncommitted time, which can be used for something more productive rather than just conducting random patrols (Weisburd & Emison, 2015, pg. 368). The Kansas City police department experiment and similar experiments have concluded that about 70% of patrol time is uncommitted time (Weisburd et al., 2015, pg. 368). These finding means that there are resources available that can help make patrol more effective, however they are not being used to its full potential (Weisburd et al., 2015, pg. 368). In order for police administrators to make use of these resources that are not being used to its full potential, the administrator must first be able to identify these resources (Weisburd et al., 2015, pg.
371). A technological solution for this problem is the implementation of Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL). AVL works by using GPS on patrol cars and radio waves that are sent every so often to identify the location of patrol officers so that the administrator can keep track of where officers are spending their time during their patrol shift (Weisburd et al., 2015, pg. 371). Moreover, the AVL technology has the ability to determine the status of the officers such as whether they are responding to a service call; patrolling a hot spot; patrolling an area inside their beat; patrolling an area outside the beat, or just conducting a random patrol (Weisburd et al., 2015, pg.
371). In 2010 the Dallas police department volunteered to test whether or not the AVL technology can help administrator find and reduce uncommitted time to make patrol more effective (Weisburd et al., 2015, pg. 374). The experiment lasted 13 weeks and patrol officer were aware that the experiment was taking place (Weisburd et al., 2015, pg. 375). The results of the experiment helped the police administrator identify some of the uncommitted patrol time and transform it into directed patrol (Weisburd et al., 2015, pg. 385). The conversion of the uncommitted patrol time to a directed patrol strategy helped the Dallas police department reduce the crime rate by using more effectively the resources that they already had (Weisburd et al., 2015, pg. 385). Self-driving patrol vehicles is another technology that can also help make police patrol more effective. Patrol officers have to multitask every day while they are driving their patrol vehicles. Officers are expected to answer radios; look for violations; pay attention to pedestrians; and check their computers among many other tasks that they do while driving (Schoonmaker, 2014, pg. 6). Having a self-driven patrol vehicle can make the officers’ job much easier and effective because it will allow officers to focus on policing tasks instead of driving while also trying to do these tasks (Schoonmaker, 2014, pg. 7).
At the same time self-driving patrol vehicles can also increase the safety of officers; other motorists; and pedestrians, since the vehicle will be driven by itself (Schoonmaker, 2014, pg. 7). This will decrease the chances of an officer having a accident due to multitasking and being distracted while driving (Schoonmaker, 2014, pg. 7). These tasks that officers are expected to do while driving their patrol vehicles have caused many accidents that have resulted in fatalities in recent years (Schoonmaker, 2014, pg. 7). A study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2011 found that from 2000 to 2008 there has been 559 police patrol vehicle accidents in which police officers have lost their lives (Schoonmaker, 2014, pg. 7). Many of these accidents could probably have been avoided with self-driven vehicles, since it would allow officers to use other technologies that they already have within their patrol vehicles to its full potential without having to worry about hitting another vehicle or person (Schoonmaker, 2014, pg. 8).
However, there are many challenges that must be overcome in order to actually implement self-driven vehicles to police patrol.
First, the budgets of police departments will need to be expanded in order for police departments to be able to afford to buy these new cars and afford maintenance for them (Schoonmaker, 2014, pg. 8) Second, this new technology might not be accepted by the officers themselves due to safety or personal concerns, or the community might not like this new approach that the police is taking to combat crime (Schoonmaker, 2014, pg. 6). Third, police departments will have to create new policies about what things are officers allowed to do and what things they are not allowed to do while on the patrol car as well as when is it appropriate to use the patrol car in self-driven mode and when is it appropriate to use the patrol car in manual mode (Schoonmaker, 2014, pg.
8).
Another technology that can help make police patrol more effective is the automated number plate recognition (ANPR) (Lum, Hibdon, Cave, Koper & Merola, 2011, pg. 322). ANPR works by mounting a camera in a patrol vehicle, the camera uses sensors that have the capability of reading license plates numbers that are within a close distance of the patrol vehicle (Lum et al., 2011, pg. 322).