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GPS Increasingly Found In Law Enforcement's Tool Box
GPS isn't just for helping keep you on the right road to nowhere anymore. The satellite system, originally developed by the military, is finding a new home in the arsenal of law enforcement agencies everywhere.
Police departments around the country and globe are strapping GPS bracelets to sex offenders and gang members released on probation, as well as to those arrested repeatedly for domestic violence charges. The units are used as an alternative to incarceration, which can cost upwards of $40,000 per-year, per-inmate. The GPS service, on the other hand, costs only $3,400 per-year, according to the Massachusetts Police Department.
The system seems to be particularly effective in instances of domestic abuse. In Pitt County, North Carolina, those accused of beating their wives (or husbands) are fitted with a GPS bracelet that sounds an alarm in the police station if the batterer comes within a certain distance of the victims home. The system has proven fairly effective so far, with the recidivism rate for domestic violence cases dropping to 14 percent in the years following the institution of program. However, once the GPS was removed, that rate shot back up to 40 percent.
GPS isn't a cure all for the safety of victims and our overcrowded prison system, but it is sure to be an important tool in the crime fighting arsenal of any 21st century police department. [Source: Reuters]
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Comments
2
Subscribe to commentsSiliconDocMay 20th 2008 10:07AM
It seems to me we always have these same crimes pushed in our faces over and over again. Domestic violence. Drugs. Crimes related to vehicles. Then we are told that this or that new power for police is needed, umm.. well, because... uhh, well "it works" or more often " the crime rate has so exploded we need new tools to get a grip on it" < so often we are supposed to believe that - crime apparently has continued to be in a massive explosion for the past few decades....in a never ending super massive rising tide...
So we keep making harsher laws - and lo and behold - more crimes "crop up". Now someone with just .08 alcohol level, who was driving a vehicle, is publicly labelled a murderer, since the brilliant trained masses now "know it's the very next thing that will happen" if something draconian isn't done.
Then all the internet self praising "I'm a saint" types that can't spell or form proper sentences chime in about how terrible that person is and how they would never do such a thing and what a great scourge the SUSPECT is on society...
So, of course, once again, we have the need for a new "law enforcement tool". Everything is a new "tool" nowadays, too. Have you noticed that ?
People supposedly carry around "coping tools". Police need a new tool twice a year. Tasers, gps bracelets, homeland security US citizen databases, "drunk driving total pullover everyone checkpoints", vehicle confiscation for loud music, required blood drawing, drug dogs at all US public schools, metal detectors at all schools, total gun ban areas... it goes on and on and on...
I frankly do wonder what the police used to do just a few decades ago when they didn't have all these hundreds of new tools and draconian laws... ( Oh yeah, there was this thing called common sense ).
Now, however, like I just read at the big A-lphabet network yesterday, " Joe policeman gets a 1,000 beats a minute racing heart everytime he makes a traffic stop, because you never know what might happen".
I guess that's the new MENTALity. Yeah, it's mental.
Welcome to the GPS tracking. My golly, did the article mention child molesters - I think so - I guess the 2,000 feet within any public school law wasn't working.... and everyone knows there's a child molester lurking around every corner... oh and a gun toting crazed maniac, and a soon to be killer drving citizen who just broke some traffic law, and an abusive spouse, a murderous rampaging school student, and disgruntled going postal postal worker... yeah.. the list is endless, huh.
That's why a hundred new tools aren't enough, right ?
I don't trust the crazy new draconian media freak show "COPS" playing 24/7/365 anymore, but I'm sure thousands of insane blabbering fellow citizens (and suddenly blog appearing officers and former officers) will shriek with fear that to not immediately obey the commands of an officer means " you are asking for it" and "need to be beaten or tasered" and of course, "should be wearing an ankle GPS" and "got what you deserved".
It must be too many foreigners here, all pretending they know it all, all of a sudden.
AndyJul 31st 2008 3:12PM
if the stalking and custody laws were fair we most likely wouldn't have that problem to begin with... so there are a few cases, all the gps in the world and out of the world won't stop that.. sides so you lose a few people nothing to get all technical, or even create a bunch of useless laws that violate others rights over, there are plenty to spare.