Evolution of Police Technology

Evolution of Police Technology

Police technology has improved tremendously over the past few years. Several years ago, law enforcement was represented only by the local police chief with a badge, a sheriff’s badge, and a city posse. However, police are divided into three eras in the cycle of changing police technology: the political period, the technological age, and the collective period (Moriarty, 2017).   There have been significant improvements in police technology in all three eras. During the political period around 1903, law enforcement used to monitor unpaved highways and broken foot and horseback pathways. Then came other technical advances like the cellphones, daily mail, surveillance box, and Bertillon used to track criminals, as well as the first models of fingerprinting systems.

The police were later fitted with a pistol and a telescoping baton, under the new model era that started around the 1920s. This period saw the invention of the lie detector, an improved method of fingerprinting, handwriting recognition devices, and automobile use. Radar was usable with two-way antennas.

The 1970 age of the police model gave way to crime prevention. Several technical advancements have been made in that period (Moriarty, 2017). Policing, then, shifted to computerization. Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) was created and introduced, and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) was established. Advanced and upgraded 911 services came into play, introducing the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS).

The future of community policing and enforcement innovation contains a lot of developments in store, such as the cybernetic implants that improve strength and endurance, development of weapons along with the development of intelligence (Mays and Rudell, 2019).

Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS) used for suspect recognition have been integral to the activities of the enforcement and other homeland security organizations around the world since they first appeared in the 1980s. Such technologies have radically changed how police approach the prosecution of a wide variety of crimes and illegal activity by significantly improving the capacity for effective detection of a suspect (Busch and Ellingsgaard, 2017). AFIS has enhanced the collection, classification, and Identification of fingerprints via image amplification algorithms that fix various issues that may influence the quality standard of print or latent photos. Additionally, AFIS features extraction algorithms built to recognize the minute details (usually ridge ends and ridge quantum superposition) that differentiate between one fingerprint and the other. Computer programs that can spot non-minutiae items, like textures or pores, may support these as well.

Moreover, the combination of both minute details and non-minutiae analytics in the quest for a match can seem extremely useful. AFIS allows automatic indexation of biometrics, which restricts the sheer massive amount of information that an AFIS requires to sequence when looking for a match, considerably reducing the time needed to complete the task. Finally, the design and selection of matching parameters used by the AFIS – and its users – has a significant effect on the number of possible matches, false positives, and false negatives produced (Busch and Ellingsgaard, 2017). An AFIS also uses simulations to provide a ‘matching point’ which represents the confidence that a collection of prints can be considered matching another included in the dataset. Overall, it was appropriate to use an AFIS to gather and evaluate fingerprint data. This has become a must-have for major municipalities in the USA. The FBI continues to extend its automated recognition operations to include additional biometrics, such as hand, ear, and iris.

References

Busch, C., and Ellingsgaard, J. (2017). Altered Fingerprint Detection. Handbook of Biometrics for Forensic Science, pp 85-123. Book.

Mays, G. L., & Ruddell, R. (2019). Making sense of criminal justice: policies and practices. New York: Oxford University Press.

Moriarty, J. L. (2017). CRIMINAL JUSTICE TECHNOLOGY IN THE 21st CENTURY: Third Edition.  Charles C Thomas Publisher. Book.