GPS and Law Enforcement

thats so they can find there way back to the station lol

They gotta find the doughnut shops don't they?

Honestly, I don't see how law enforcement officers can find all the places they have to go. My son is a retired police officer and they lived with map books and having the dispatcher doing "look ups". In addition, he had a hand (portable) tape recorder to tape the directions the dispatcher gave him.

Yes, GPS is a blessing for the officers that have the good fortune to be able to use one.

They need DD file

Yeah, I have noticed more and more officers here using their own personal GPSr units in their patrol cars. I have asked a few of them if they were issued or if it was their own and all of them said that it was their own.

You probably won't see it in the local Sheriff units here as is it built into their mobil adta computers which sit pretty low in the unit...but you will notice the tuna can size antenna on the trunk of the units. I mention tuna can size because many deputies tried covering the antenna with a can to keep keep it from acquiring so their Sgt wouldn't know where they were at all times (their locations are broadcast and available to the sgts and watch commanders). BTW, it didn't work, the unit acquired even with the cam over the antenna.

I was recently on the jury of a trial where one piece of evidence was a photo of the defendant's license plate taken by a patrol car equipped with a "plate reader". Syncing the time stamp of the photo with the GPS log of the patrol car, they were able to establish that the defendant was a few hundred yards away driving towards the victim's house when the photo was taken.

I have a Garmin StreetPilot 2730, however I am in plain clothes and an unmarked car. I am assigned to civil process and I especially like the multiple destination routing feature. When I get new work I often enter up to 15 or more new addresses and then let the Auto Sort do its magic. I do have an XM account, but if it wasn't for that I would probably get either a Garmin Nuvi 750 or a new Garmin Nuvi 5000. I also like the feature on the SP2730 where it displays approximate addresses as you are driving. I don't know what they call that feature and I don't know if it is unique to the StreetPilots or not, but it is a very handy feature.

It's only as useful as the maps are current however. With urban sprawl and new development going on everywhere it's still not going to be 100% unless they get updated maps quicker than the rest of the population. I'd expect it to be more useful in cities where there is no more room for new streets.

I'm surprised they don't already have built-in GPS tracking on most of police cars.

Ein........It's called Money.....

That is a great thing for police to have. Many dept have officers from around the state and country so they dont always know the area as well as others so the gps can be a godsend for them.

all the units will have one

Regards, Ted

Most big city departments have laptops or mobile digital terminals that include mapping software.