The U.S. Department of Defense sends and receives a lot of stuff. All of it must be recorded, tracked, processed and accounted for in various systems – an enormous job, as anyone can imagine.
Seeking to make those procedures more streamlined and efficient, the DoD in 2004 imposed a mandate to use RFID technology, starting with tags affixed to all cases and pallets. RFID – which stands for radio frequency identification – uses radio waves to identify and track items through the quick wireless scanning of small tags attached to them. These tags contain microchips and small antennae and can be scanned nearly instantly by reader devices supported by back-end software.
RFID has come into broad use for the accuracy and visibility it provides in supply chain and logistics contexts, as well as in retail sales, where it can help monitor and protect inventory. It’s also made inroads into public safety, with EMS organizations, as one example, embracing the technology to help them track drug flow, maintain supplies and prevent diversion of dangerous medications like narcotics. In all these settings, it’s demonstrated benefits like speed, precision and improved awareness in keeping figurative eyes on organizations’ valuable stock.
RFID comes to law enforcement
Along with a similar demand the previous year from retail giant Walmart, the Defense Department’s edict helped propel the growth of RFID across numerous U.S. sectors both commercial and beyond. That in turn led it into another fertile area: police departments, which also must keep close track of lots of dangerous and high-value items.
The earliest law enforcement RFID programs arose around the same time as the Walmart and DoD policies. Often funded by grants or conducted as pilot projects, these initial programs generally started with evidence and the contents of departments’ property rooms. Early tagging efforts focused on firearms, radios and certain kinds of evidence, but cost and technical complexity both inhibited the technology’s early growth.
Awareness of RFID’s potential benefits for law enforcement, however, continued to spread over the second half of the aughts. Grants programs like the Urban Areas Security Initiative and State Homeland Security Program provided help obtaining it, and large departments like those in Los Angeles and Houston began adding RFID to their evidence management practices.
By the 2010s, prices were coming down, purpose-built solutions began to emerge for public safety, and police departments’ use expanded in areas like fleet monitoring, gear check-out and check-in, and around evidence handling. By a decade later, some departments were using RFID to track nearly all their items, often alongside QR or barcodes.
“We’re starting to see a lot of interest in RFID, and logically so,” said Kerry Wicks, senior account manager for Zebra Technologies, a major provider of RFID and other products for law enforcement and other industries. “Many of the law enforcement agencies we work with have been doing barcode technologies with evidence management for years, so they’re very used to that perspective. However, many of them are also looking for a solution that will help them from an audit and inventory perspective. And that’s where RFID comes in.”
Weeks into days, hours into minutes
Bar- and QR codes are certainly useful for confirming an item’s identity when you scan it. But RFID offers several additional benefits, the biggest of which is speed: It can read multiple RFID tags simultaneously – hundreds per second. Imagine the time savings that could produce in a busy property or evidence room.
“If you think about it, I can print a label; put it on a box, a bag, a bin, whatever it is; put it in an evidence room; and annotate in the software where it’s located – easy enough,” said Wicks, who spent 13 years as a sheriff’s deputy in North Carolina. “But then when I go to do an audit, I have to go in and scan each individual thing with a barcode reader and confirm what it is. So if I have a room with 1,000 items, that’s 1,000 scans. Then multiply that by three minutes or five minutes or whatever the time per transaction is.
“The inventory and audit control potential is tremendous.”
“With RFID, I can walk in and just physically scan the entire room with a device and in minutes have a reading of everything that’s in there. So now I have a working list. And that’ll show me what’s there, but it will also show me what’s missing. So I literally have confirmation, there are 998 items present. I’ve got two items missing, and I can quickly go check and determine, ‘Oh, that one’s out to the lab for testing, and this one was signed out for court.’”
On a smaller scale, if an officer is issued numerous pieces of equipment that are carried in their patrol car, simply walking around the car – a 20- to 30-second job – is all that’s needed to confirm they still have everything.
That kind of ability can turn jobs measured in weeks and days into jobs measured in hours and minutes. “The inventory and audit control potential is tremendous,” Wicks added.
At a time when nearly everyone is strapped for personnel and resources, expediting these prolonged processes can free up a lot of time for other duties.
RFID additionally doesn’t require line-of-sight scanning. Officers can scan items inside containers or storage bins without opening them. And while barcodes contain only a single identifier, RFID tags can store information such as serial numbers, items’ histories and time stamps. This helps ensure integrity and defensibility throughout the chain of custody.
Costs have declined dramatically in the last decade, increasing the viability of RFID as a solution. It’s also now generally integrable with advanced platforms like AI and machine learning, the Internet of Things, location systems, and mobile apps and edge devices, further connecting departments into the growing data networks that power today’s operations.
RFID in a phone-size device
Zebra Technologies offers a comprehensive suite of RFID devices. These include handheld and fixed readers, antennae, printers and pass-through portals.
“What’s unique for us is that some of our newer technology and handhelds for our mobile readers can read thousands of tags in a second,” said Wicks. “It almost sounds impossible, but it’s realistic – for users the performance of the device is critical.
“We support not only mobile readers but fixed readers you can place over doors and even portals, where as I drive through a door or gate or entryway, we can read tags as vehicles pass through. We can also use technology with antennas to extend ranges. Those are some of the things that really differentiate Zebra as a leader in this technology.”
The company’s RFD40 models are designed to pair with Zebra’s rugged mobile computers commonly used in law enforcement settings. These can read more than 1,300 tags a second and feature extended battery life and enhanced ergonomics. A Premium Plus model adds a two-dimensional imager and advanced wireless (Bluetooth 5.3, Wi‑Fi 6).
A novel new advance is the EM45 series, which brings RFID capabilities to a phone-size device. Just 6.7 by 3.2 by 0.4 inches and 8.8 ounces with battery, the RFID model is an all-in-one solution that includes a high-performance camera and permits the full range of inventory management without the need for multiple devices. 5G, Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6E ensure quick connectivity, and a 4,750-mAh battery sustains up to 25 hours of use.
Fixed readers suitable for law enforcement use include the FX9600, which is commonly used in evidence and asset management systems, and the FXR90 line, which is designed for extreme environments and is suitable for outdoor operations, vehicle checkpoints, etc.
With this expanding range of options, departments can venture into RFID with limited initial steps and not break the bank.
“I think for agencies getting started, it would make sense to have a mobile reader,” said Wicks. “They’ll need a label printer, which would look very similar to the printer they’re using to print barcodes, and then just the actual supplies. Get the reader, the printer and the labels, and you’re off to the races.”
Modest investment yields big benefits
That modest investment can pay off big in time savings and inventory precision.
“To me the key is the return on investment – the improvement in efficiency when it’s time to do an inventory or audit,” said Wicks. “I hear stories of people starting in January with the intention of having a complete audit done by the end of the year, and they finish at 30% or 40%. And those are big-ticket items – from a cost perspective, things that require a focus. RFID technology gives agencies the ability to be accountable for their assets, but also to significantly reduce the number of man-hours required for that accountability.”
For more information, visit Zebra Technologies.
