The thermal imaging device can detect heat from a variety of sources.
By James Russell, The Jupiter, Fla. Courier
Local law enforcement is prepared to put extra heat on criminal activities, thanks to a grant from the Counter Drug Technology Assistance Center.
Jupiter, Fla. Police recently added another high-tech weapon to the department’s crime-fighting arsenal in the form of a hand-held thermal imaging digital camera, the Raytheon PalmIR250.
Detective Amy Facchine, public information officer for the Jupiter Police, said the camera and training on its use was funded through a $15,000 grant awarded to the department from the Counter Drug Technology Assistance Center, in coordination with the U.S. Army’s Electronic Proving Ground.
Facchine said the department will employ the heat-sensing device in a number of law enforcement activities, including search and rescue operations, fugitive apprehension, commercial surveillance, K-9 tracking, vice operations and crime scene investigations.
“It’s an incredibly useful tool that was a wide variety of uses,” said Sgt. Jim Barrett, one of the department’s two certified thermographers. “It’s basically like a big eye that just picks up heat and provides an image of what that heat looks like.”
Barrett, who attended a three-day training course on the camera in Orlando, said the 2.6-pound thermal imaging device can detect the heat from a human body at a range of about a half-mile. He said larger heat sources can be detected at an even greater distance.
“All objects in life radiate, reflect or conduct heat in some form, and the camera measures the differences in temperature between objects and displays images in a recognizable form,” Barrett said. “The camera can identify target temperatures to .01 degree centigrade.”
Barrett said the device is so sensitive to heat that it can actually be used to track a person from the residual warmth left on the ground from a foot step. When using the camera for search and rescue operations, it allows officers to scan huge wooded areas and pick out living objects, such as a lost child.
“It’s important to let people know that this camera is not an X-ray device,” Barrett said. “It’s not invasive or intrusive. We can’t look through walls with it.”
Although the grant program that allowed Jupiter to purchase a thermal imager was developed to scan homes in search of the intense heat produced by indoor marijuana growing rooms, Barrett said police cannot scan a residence without first obtaining a warrant to do so.
“The camera is an effective drug interdiction tool, but it really has many more life-saving capabilities that we will be able to use here in Jupiter,” Barrett said.