Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Law-enforcement officials in central Ohio have made three arrests in the past two weeks by secretly attaching GPS devices to suspects’ cars and tracking their movements.
But they don’t want to talk about it out of concern that the information will benefit criminal minds.
The Franklin County sheriff’s office used the Global Positioning System to track down two men suspected in a string of home-invasion robberies on Jan. 23. But Chief Deputy Steve Martin wouldn’t discuss its use of the technology, nor would he say whether investigators obtained a warrant to place the tracking unit on the suspects’ car.
Whether a warrant is needed in Ohio is unclear.
“Ohio courts have been relatively silent on what’s required,” said Assistant City Attorney Jeff Furbee, a legal adviser to the Columbus Police Division.
Recent rulings from other states are in conflict. In May, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals ruled that law-enforcement officers can attach GPS devices to vehicles without obtaining warrants. A week later, the New York State Court of Appeals came to a different conclusion, ruling that police must obtain a warrant.
The ACLU of Ohio sides with the New York ruling, believing that GPS tracking without a warrant violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, staff counsel Carrie Davis said.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Columbus recommends that federal agencies, and local agencies working with federal task forces, seek a warrant whenever placing a GPS device on a suspect’s car, Assistant U.S. Attorney David DeVillers said.
A warrant probably isn’t required if the vehicle is on public property, such as a street, and the device is placed on the vehicle’s exterior, he said. But lack of a warrant would prevent investigators from tracking the vehicle onto private property.
“If they pull into a warehouse or a private compound, we’d have to turn off the tracker,” DeVillers said.
As of yesterday, nothing had been filed in Franklin County Municipal Court showing that GPS-placement warrants were sought this year by the sheriff’s office or the Upper Arlington Police Department, which used a tracking device to arrest a burglary suspect Jan. 27.
Both agencies revealed their use of the GPS technology only when seeking warrants to search the suspects’ vehicles and homes after the arrests.
Court records show that in 2009, 18 tracking-device search warrants were issued in Franklin County. Fourteen were issued to Columbus police, three to Grove City police, and one to the sheriff’s office.
Upper Arlington police didn’t return messages seeking comment about the technology.
The tracking units used by law enforcement cost between $400 and $800 and are about the size of a cell phone, said George Karonis, president of LiveView GPS Inc. of California.
Each law-enforcement agency conducts its own monitoring of the device using a Web-enabled computer linked to satellite technology.
“They can do real-time tracking that shows where the unit is moving every 20 feet or every 10 seconds,” he said.
Furbee said Columbus police “often have a search warrant and often have a court order” when placing tracking units on vehicles. “It depends on the circumstances. It is so variable.”
But Sgt. Rich Weiner, a police spokesman, said the division won’t discuss the technology or how often, if ever, it is used.
“It’s a very touchy subject,” he said.
Dispatch information specialist Julie Albert provided research for this story.
Copyright 2010 Columbus Dispatch