Why does a “citizen” get pulled over for going 5 miles over the speed limit while the “enforcer” can drive any speed they want? Can they exceed the speed limit during a non-emergency because they are trained for high speed? Or is it because there is nobody watching them and there are no consequences?
In Massachusetts this winter, all of the snow-plows are being equipped with GPS radios that will monitor each plow. If they are hanging out at the donut shop, they won’t get paid. Why not equip police cars with the same radios? If the police car exceeds the speed limit by 10 MPH, it will be recorded and the officer will have to explain why he/she was speeding during a non-emergency. I know some communities’ police force have already used this technology, but it should be standard equipment.
Also, GPS radios would help dispatchers locate the closest police officer to a 911 call. It would also be useful information to reconstruct the all-to-often police crashes.
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I've seen police cars on patrol pull up to each other in opposite directions in a dead end street and spend a long time chatting. I always wondered if their commanding officers knew what they were doing. With GPS, they would.
It's a great idea, and it prompted me to finally type up a related idea of mine. I wonder though, what if the bad guys hacked into the system, and used the information to evade capture.
Each city has guidelines for how fast a police car can drive over the speed limit. In Kalamazoo, Michigan the police are limited to 15 mph over the speed limit, even in high speed chases. There are enough police and off-duty officers that they wait for them to slow down and arrest them. All firemen are police and all police are firemen. Population about 200,000. In some cases, I've heard of police letting speeding violators go and then at 3 am show up at their house and either issue a ticket or arrest them. Don't get me wrong though, the Kalamazoo police are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. But don't do drugs, they hire ex-Navy Seals for dealing with drug related issues; they love a good foot chase.
This idea has already been developed by University of California at Berkeley
UC Berkeley Police Experimental Car