CHICAGO POLICE: A LACK OF TECHNOLOGY?
Filed Thursday, May 22. 2008
What we take for granted in the suburbs is just on a wish list for Chicago police.
"You have to fight crime with better weapons than what the bad guys have." While this may sound too simplistic to some, it's 100 percent true when you look at crime in Chicago and other major metropolitan areas. Technology isn't just computers and software. It can include the latest in radios, camera equipment, forensics and weapons as well as non-lethal (i.e. taser) devices. Applying Technology: Beware In reading some blogs, those in the know are looking at Chicago to again become the murder capital of the country. Some keep saying it's going to be a long summer. What's the current homicide rate in Chicago? Where is it predicted to go? Some people are trying to dance around these questions. Are the police not properly equipped? Unfortunately, political correctness melts quickly in the light of political accuracy. One of the comments I heard years ago when Chicago's 911 center was opened was it cost too much and it was (as one TV reporter put it) "the Taj Mahal of technology". It's funny how his assessment was so biased against technology, yet since then, Chicago's 911 center is still considered the best in the country by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The bottom line is you need a lot of technology to fight sophisticated crime as well as a high volume of crime. Technology costs money. Since the middle of the 1990s, the proliferation of computer technology has been great along with mission-critical communications to various law enforcement agencies. Computers in police cars with sophisticated linkages to various state and national databases are considered standard for any suburban police department to do their job. In Chicago, though, I have read about poor interaction with computer operations. As for cameras on street corners, this is something that was first implemented in Europe and has caught on in the U.S. There can be a positive impact, but in designing the capabilities, you must match the components together. This blog comment concerns the surveillance camera technology: Unless something has changed in the past 90 days, you still have 559 cameras feeding into a server designed for 100. The server alone costs a boatload of money. One estimate heard was a [$250,000]. The city has been trying to get by with duct tape and prayers. Having good technology is not enough. It has to be properly designed and implemented. You also have to have people well trained to use the technology correctly. If the system was designed with more cameras than the server can handle, it will perform poorly if at all. In the Chicago suburbs, some departments have used Nextel phones as backups to radios in cars. Some Chicago police have discussed Nextel phones as a secret godsend that could provide group and area coverage along with unit communications. Where have they been in the last five years? This is not a cutting-edge competitive advantage. It's a competitive necessity. To many suburban departments on limited budgets, the Nextel phones were a cheap but effective backup network. Is Proactive Policing a Thing of the Past? There is a laundry list of other equipment and training that the Chicago police should have, but like other cities, budgets are being restricted or don't exist. In small communities, buying shotguns or rifles for every car is an issue of buying less than one or two dozen. When you deal with outfitting a police force as large as Chicago's, you need to think about buying 10,000 of everything. That means 10,000 shotguns, 10,000 tasers and 10,000 of "fill in the blank". Another operational expense is training people on how to use the technology once it's bought. For a small suburban department, it's nothing to spend several thousand dollars on ammunition for training purposes. Multiply that by 1,000 when you look at ammunition budgets for training in Chicago. Based on reading many entries on a police-related blog, this lack of having technology at their fingertips is causing some to be less proactive than they were in the past. With the rising issues in Chicago, the police need to take an aggressive and proactive stance and not shrink back into the darkness to "just answer calls". In any job, you need the proper tools and training to do the proper job. Otherwise, your morale falls and the job suffers. When it comes to law enforcement in the city of Chicago where thousands of suburbanites commute to, they need the proper tools. It might be your life or the lives of people who work with you in Chicago. Some suburbanites I have talked with think Chicago police should be as equipped as their suburban counterparts. Weapons Weapons are as necessary for police officers as fire hoses are to firemen. You can't put out a fire without water and you can't stop violent crime without guns. Not everything can be stopped by computers and cameras mounted in patrol cars or on poles on street corners. There is also new camera technology for police pistols that some in the media think is a great technology to add. This is a 1.5-ounce camera that can record video from the perspective of a gun barrel. The argument against these gun cameras is again no budget to buy and no budget to maintain. While gun cameras could provide a lot of information in the follow up on a shooting, what if there weren't enough batteries at the station for the cameras and the gun camera was dead? What if they weren't properly maintained? These types of questions should come up in reviewing the technology before it's bought and implemented. Still, there is often an inadequate amount of due diligence done. Before buying high-tech gun cameras, buying the proper weapons themselves should be a priority. Looking back at the 1997 Bank of America robbery firefight in Hollywood, the police didn't have equipment in their cars to stop a threat. This is the incident where the police were severely outgunned against two bank robbers who had AK-47s. The lesson that should have been learned from this incident is that patrol cars need to have at least matching firepower against those committing crimes. As one Chicago cop put it eloquently: "You don't bring a camera to a gunfight." Carlinism: Politically correctness melts in the light of political accuracy. Last modified on 2012-02-04 12:41 Trackbacks
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