by Matthew B. Stannard, The San Francisco Chronicle
Like children to an exclusive toy store, law enforcement officers from around California flocked here this week to gawk and grin at the latest miniature video surveillance cameras, fingerprint scanners and guns that shoot marble-size balls of smelly goo.
Another gizmo even allows police in a high-speed pursuit to announce their approach to other motorists by breaking into their AM and FM radio broadcasts.
The California Peace Officers’ Association COPSWest Conference has grown fast since it was launched four years ago, organizers say, as technology has improved, companies have become more interested in developing law enforcement products, and police have gotten more interested in using them.
“When I first started, I walked out to the car with a note pad and a duty belt,” said Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Larry Zink. “Now, we’ve got cell phones, pagers . . . everything from the computers in cars to laser sights.
“As the evolution of law enforcement changes, we’re going to be more dependent on technology to solve cases.”
As Zink spoke, visitors dallied at the nearby FN Herstal booth, waiting to shake hands with the FN303, a “less lethal” -- the term generally used by officers who know no weapon is guaranteed harmless -- weapon that has barely hit the streets in the United States.
Powered by a miniature compressed air tank, the FN303 can launch marble-size shells more than 50 yards, salesman London Lewis said, with enough oomph to bruise but not penetrate skin. The shells burst on impact, releasing a payload of the shooter’s choice: paint, pepper spray, tear gas or “malodorant.” Price: $ 900.
On an adjacent table sits a P90 submachine gun, a snub-nosed little beast capable of spitting every bullet in a 50-round magazine in one long burst. Each bullet travels fast enough to dig through nine layers of body armor at 200 yards.
But by 400 yards, Lewis said, the P90’s custom bullets slow down so much that they can be caught by hand, reducing the chance of an errant round injuring or killing a bystander.
LESS-DEADLY FORCE
It’s a feature driven by the same demands that make the FN303 popular, Lewis said: Police want more options in the field than simply killing the bad guys and dealing with the emotional trauma and inevitable lawsuits.
“Basically, we don’t want to shoot anybody anymore, because it’s not worth it,” he said.
Across the convention center, Christine Montgomery spoke quietly into a microphone connected to a laptop computer: “You have the right to remain silent,” she said.
“Usted tiene el derecho de permanecer callado,” the machine promptly replied -- one of thousands of law-enforcement-related words and phrases Montgomery said her company’s software can translate from English to Spanish and back again.
The CopTrans system is still in development, Montgomery said -- it currently can handle only Spanish and Chinese, although plans are in the works for other languages. Price: $ 3,000 for the first unit, training included.
Camlite offers a wireless video camera embedded in a working flashlight. Imagis Technologies borrowed one at the conference to demonstrate its developing technology that can take any picture of a face -- even a composite sketch -- and compare it against photos in police, DMV and other databases.
WONDER GADGETS
Then there’s Infokall, which offers a device that’ll do a little bit of everything, with a scanner that can read a driver’s license, transmit its information to another computer to look for warrants, then copy the same information to a traffic ticket, which it prints on an internal printer.
And, almost as an encore, the device can be set up so that an officer can pull up outside a business and -- if the business has installed the right computer chip -- view images from that business’ surveillance cameras right on a PDA screen.
Until now, law enforcement technology lagged behind the civilian sector, said Ken Dueker, a Palo Alto reserve officer who also is a venture capitalist with Portola Ventures.
That’s partly because police tend to shy away from buying unproven technology, Dueker said, and partly because developers see law enforcement as a small market with limited profit potential.
Now, however, things are changing a bit, Dueker and other officers said. Technology today can actually do the gee-whiz things that developers always promised. A new generation of officers who grew up with technology is eager to adopt new equipment. And the war on terror has raised hopes that extra money could soon appear in police budgets.
If it does, it won’t be too soon for many of the officers at COPSWest, most of whom were able to do little but window-shop among the flashing lights and glittering weapons.
STICKER SHOCK
A typical reaction was that of one Irvine police officer, who on Wednesday had just one question after perusing the Alertcast system, a still-developing black box that can broadcast over multiple radio bands from a speeding squad car, alerting motorists to the approaching emergency vehicle by overriding their car’s audio system.
“How much?” the officer asked.
“About $ 2,500,” replied Heather Gendreau, Alertcast director of sales and marketing -- per car.
The officer, with 40 cars in his department, shook his head and turned away.
“Most agencies I suspect are not walking in here and walking out with billions of dollars worth of stuff,” said Timothy Ostlund of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department.
Such budget worries led many COPSWest shoppers to look most seriously at decidedly unsexy gear: low-power LED lights for squad cars, tires that won’t shred if they blow out on the road and inexpensive reflective handheld batons for traffic direction. Many officers, including one group from San Jose, were deeply intrigued by several companies’ report-writing software.
Not that the other gizmos aren’t cool, said San Jose Police Sgt. John L. Shuman.
“We like everything they show, it’s just a matter of picking what’s most effective cost-wise,” he said. “It’s been that way for 25 years -- the technology has been there, but the money hasn’t.”
And that, vendors say, translates into slow sales.
“Nobody is going to go out on a limb and blow $ 2 million in taxpayers’ money on a system that isn’t proven,” said Art Haedike, an account manager for VisionTEK, a company specializing in mobile reporting and dispatching. “That’s a good way to lose your job.