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
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.
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.