Company name: Decatur Electronics
Headquarters: San Diego, Calif.
Signature Product: Speed enforcement and traffic calming products
Website: https://www.decaturelectronics.com/
1. Who is Decatur Electronics?
Decatur Electronics designs, manufactures and services traffic speed enforcement products for the law enforcement market. Since its founding in 1955 in Decatur, Illinois, it has been working to save lives by offering innovative and reliable speed enforcements products at competitive prices.
In order to fully describe Decatur Electronics today we have to talk about our parent company, D&K Engineering. In 2018, both organizations merged.
D&K Engineering provides Total Commercialization Solutions for the medical, life sciences, digital and printing and industrial markets, which require products and instruments that have high innovation content and complex manufacturing lifecycles. With its highly talented staff, D&K Engineering is uniquely positioned to helps its customers with their design and manufacturing needs. Its customers have ranged from startups to Fortune 500 companies and it has completed over 700 product realizations to date. Its engineers are recognized as experts in their respective areas and are named in over 500 U.S. and international patents.
There’s an old saying that goes, “The sum of the parts is greater than the individual pieces,” and just that happened in 2018 when both organizations merged and formed a powerful alliance between two market drivers. We are excited for what is to come, stay tuned!
2. What was the inspiration behind starting Decatur Electronics and the merger?
Decatur Electronics was the first company to manufacture a speed radar for law enforcement in the United States.
In 2010, Decatur Electronics reached out to D&K Engineering for assistance in several projects, such as mechanical engineering design services and device manufacturing support. One of our most successful products the Scout handheld radar, was the first project both companies worked together.
Around 2017, the executive management teams at both companies came to the realization that both companies would be stronger if they merged and that merger was completed the following year.
3. What are your signature products and how do they work?
Decatur Electronics specializes in speed enforcement and traffic calming products for law enforcement. We offer in-car and handheld police radars, speed trailers and signs. Some important features and characteristics to mention:
- The G3 is the latest generation of the Genesis Radar family. The G3 is replacing the venerable and popular Genesis II Select. It is available with one or two Ka-Band directional antennas and comes with the following standard features stationary directional, moving same lane, and moving opposite processing modes all with faster target tracking options, a “right sized” cordless remote and a three year warranty.
- The SCOUT and GHD are our handheld speed radars, with over 15,000 units deployed across North America. The battery powered SCOUT offers up to seven days of use between charges, the GHD is our most affordable solution, with a cigarette lighter cord, very popular with departments with constrained equipment budgets.
- The OnSite Speed Trailers and Sign product line are highly flexible traffic calming solutions. Using extraordinarily bright white LEDs, it offers 45 pre-programmed bilingual (Spanish/English) messages and graphics, along with the option for custom messages. High output solar panels, red/blue warning flasher and a data logger for traffic reporting are popular options. In addition to normal roadway use they are deployed in school zones, construction projects and other areas where people congregate like arenas.
4. How can we acquire your products?
Decatur Electronics prides its self in a company that it easy to do business with. To that end you may contact the company directly, use one of our highly trained sales reps or a nationwide dealer network.
Attention government buyers, federal government – state, local and tribal government entities – cash in on Decatur Electronics Cooperative Buying. We recently were awarded a National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) ValuePoint state-level contract.
We are also working with the General Services Administration (GSA) to be awarded a GSA Schedule.
5. What makes your company unique?
Our company is unique because of its 65 years history and experience. We designed, developed and manufactured the first police radar for the North American market. Today, we are excited to say that there are more than 120,000 police radars deployed in the field making the roadways safer every single day.
In a few words, our company is unique because of its 65 years history and experience. We are wiser about technology, features and the overall process to develop innovative speed enforcement tools that allow you to save lives without financial pain.
6. What do your customers like best about you and your products?
Our customers trust us because our products have been developed, designed and manufactured by a team with more than 300 years of combined experience in the speed enforcement market. The Decatur products are unmatched in product reliability; there are 30-year-old Decatur products still working in use today.
The Decatur products have operator friendly features and are cost effective. We offer 72 hours upon purchase order confirmation lead times. In addition, we have distribution centers across North America, as well as strategically located authorized service centers to perform any repairs and annual calibrations. All our speed enforcement and traffic calming products are designed and manufactured in the United States. Decatur Electronics is committed to continue supporting our nation.
7. What is the most rewarding part of serving the law enforcement community?
Every day, all the employees at Decatur Electronics find excitement at their jobs because we all know that we are not only working to release the most technologically advanced products, but that our high quality, easy to use and affordable products are used every day globally to save lives, making our roads and communities safer.
8. What’s next for your company?
Decatur Electronics’ mission is to be the leader in the development and manufacturing of police radar and speed signs. Our engineers’ design notebook are filled with improvements for existing products and clever ideas for new ones. Quite frankly, we found ourselves to be in the spot where we had more ideas than resources to implement them and had to be very selective on what engineering worked on. All of that changed with the merger. Now, we have access to a pool of incredibly talented engineers. New products are being worked on in parallel and product announcements will happen more frequently.
We released our latest in-car radar, the G3, at the beginning of this year. Several weeks ago, we released the redesigned VIP (Vehicle Interface Portal), the VIP2 is a popular accessory for the G2/G3 radar line. Also, in a few months, we will have several new and revolutionary speed enforcement products available for deployment.