A striking aspect for rural respondents to this year’s What Cops Want survey wasn’t how often technology fails, but how little access rural officers have to modern technology in the first place. Compared to suburban and urban peers, rural officers were far more likely to report that they lack basics like MDTs or functioning radios, let alone cool-kid tools like ALPRs, drones or real-time GPS tracking. Considering that rural officers wait longer - a lot longer - for backup than those in more populated places, technology gaps represent not inconvenience but officer safety risks.
The invisible crisis: Being under-equipped, underfunded and unseen
“We have none, so anything would be better.”
That’s how a rural officer responded when asked what kind of situational awareness technology would be most useful. An officer responding to calls alone and far from backup could benefit most from vehicle-based surveillance systems and drones, but rather than being welcomed as force-multipliers that don’t need health benefits or overtime pay, technology tends to be viewed as fancy toys that drag on rural budgets.
“Rural” is a place, not a size, and officers from large state agencies patrol in rural places.Nevertheless most law enforcement agencies in the US are small, nearly half with 10 or fewer officers. Small agencies serve communities with small tax bases, and their budgets reflect that. Staffing, training and equipment fall behind. Little attention in the news means that equipment failures and officer-safety issues glide quietly below the public’s radar. Lack of publicity enables ongoing gaps, with little pressure on administrations to change.
Radios that don’t work: The original officer-safety problem
“We use a terrible radio system and have times where we can’t get out on the radio, (even) in areas that are not super rural.”
Rural officers responded to the survey with the highest levels of reported technology failures, lowest reported levels of technology effectiveness and the slowest response to fixing tech problems. The most obvious failures were in the oldest technology. Police radios have been in use for nearly a hundred years yet in rural places, they still aren’t dependable.
Geography and distance can be insurmountable obstacles; the wrong side of a mountain may defeat the most sophisticated satellite technology. More often, the problem is poor systems integration, lack of maintenance and infrastructure, and procurement that prioritizes cost at the expense of reliability and durability.
Procurement traps: Why low-bid purchasing backfires on safety
Free responses to the survey included more comments about strapped budgets and high costs for basic equipment than I can realistically include. One mentioned prior access to a technology that was lost to ensuing budget cuts. That points to a baseline problem regarding access to modern tools for rural officers: many new technologies aren’t one-time purchases, but come with ongoing costs for manufacturer support or subscriptions that are out of the reach of smaller departments.
High costs and low budgets provide powerful incentives for purchases from lowest-bid providers without considering quality and durability. This can mean equipment lacking necessary components, rushed planning, poor design and cheap materials. (One officer commented about BWCs with weak clips that repeatedly broke.) Buying from lowest bidders appears deceptively affordable if it results in repeated purchases, repairs, or going without in the near future.
The wishlist versus the reality check: What officers say the actually need
“Our agency needs to catch up with the times.”
Rural officers were less likely than others to request high-tech options like facial recognition or wearable health monitors when they need bedrock basics. They were less worried about systems integrations or training for tech improvements, because they had very few.
They did want things that improve resource access and officer safety: functioning radios, infrastructure to support them, real-time information updates and cameras on their vehicles. Cameras that face the side and rear of their vehicles can be highly valuable to rural officers, when so many of them work solo, with little backup. For perspective, suburban and urban officers reported that cover officers arrived in less than five minutes about 50% of the time compared to 9% for rural officers. An extra set of “eyes” in a solo officer’s blind spot could save lives.
Strategies for catching up to the 21st century
Technology can provide the tools for improving officer safety in rural places, but only if small departments can access them. Department heads and decision makers must develop both innovation and perseverance to make that access possible. That means wise purchasing to ensure interoperability for communications, seeking out grant pathways for both one-time and ongoing expenses, developing partnerships with private businesses to fill gaps between just-enough and optimal procurement, and cooperating with neighboring agencies to regionalize shared tech solutions. It is also worth lobbying at the state level for funding models that include all agencies in the pursuit of improved technology and officer safety.
We asked officers what they needed and they answered, “I just want a radio that works.”
It’s a reasonable request.
