Cops Are Shooting GPS Bullets at Criminals’ Vehicles

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
I don’t know about you, but I've always thought that high speed police chases were more dangerous than the criminals they were chasing. Obviously, some law enforcement agencies see it the same way and are employing new technology to catch the bad guys without destroying any lives or property in the process.
 
This is all fine and good until you get to a suppression hearing where the defense argues that police can't identify who was driving the car the whole time as it fled the scene and their client was no where near the place.
 
It’s a non-lethal projectile called StarChase and it’s designed to track vehicles, not disable them.
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Where's the little electroshock dohicky from the 2nd Fast & Furious movie? That seems like an awesome way to stop a car chase.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Where's the little electroshock dohicky from the 2nd Fast & Furious movie? That seems like an awesome way to stop a car chase.
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That'll probably come in version 2. They just need to get all the PDs to buy version 1 first. Then blammo, upgrade time, add it to your yearly budget.
 
Lol. Why does this remind of the police chase scene in 2 Fast 2 Furious, where they shoot an "electrical system disabler" into the yellow Evo?
 
@ sfsuphysics; lol, was typing the same thing out before you posted. Weird :D
 
kirbyrj said:
This is all fine and good until you get to a suppression hearing where the defense argues that police can't identify who was driving the car the whole time as it fled the scene and their client was no where near the place.
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Considering a lot of car chases are for stolen vehicles, if the thief's DNA is in the car (and it will be) then that's enough to convict them. If it's not a stolen vehicle then odds are it's either fleeing a crime scene or there's a prior warrant. The GPS device can track the car long enough for a helicopter to get eyes on it and direct other officers to set up a roadblock and surround the vehicle. Then they can worry about the lawyers.

Point is, high-speed chases kill people and break stuff. If this cuts down on high-speed chases then it's a good thing.
 
Phoenix333 said:
Considering a lot of car chases are for stolen vehicles, if the thief's DNA is in the car (and it will be) then that's enough to convict them. If it's not a stolen vehicle then odds are it's either fleeing a crime scene or there's a prior warrant. The GPS device can track the car long enough for a helicopter to get eyes on it and direct other officers to set up a roadblock and surround the vehicle. Then they can worry about the lawyers.

Point is, high-speed chases kill people and break stuff. If this cuts down on high-speed chases then it's a good thing.
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1. Car chases are not mostly about stolen vehicles.
2. Thief's DNA in car is not enough to convict because if they've ever had a legal right to use that vehicle their DNA would be present.
3. Getting a helicopter in the air isn't like it is on COPS, nor is it even feasible in rural departments. It takes a good 35-40 min if its available which is plenty of time for reasonable doubt to enter a juries' minds.

Point is, if you take away police's ability to enter a high speed chase, you encourage criminals to drive fast to evade capture. Not every chase ends in dead people and broken stuff.
 
Phoenix333 said:
Considering a lot of car chases are for stolen vehicles, if the thief's DNA is in the car (and it will be) then that's enough to convict them. If it's not a stolen vehicle then odds are it's either fleeing a crime scene or there's a prior warrant. The GPS device can track the car long enough for a helicopter to get eyes on it and direct other officers to set up a roadblock and surround the vehicle. Then they can worry about the lawyers.

Point is, high-speed chases kill people and break stuff. If this cuts down on high-speed chases then it's a good thing.
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Police do not investigate normal auto thefts in most cities anymore. One of our trucks were stolen, we had video, and knew who did it. They did not check for fingerprints, or even look at the video, or interview the suspect. "You have insurance, let them handle it."

Same is true for burglary and identity theft.
 
Qinsp said:
Police do not investigate normal auto thefts in most cities anymore. One of our trucks were stolen, we had video, and knew who did it. They did not check for fingerprints, or even look at the video, or interview the suspect. "You have insurance, let them handle it."

Same is true for burglary and identity theft.
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The only thing I'd agree with here is identity theft. CC companies make it impossibly difficult to get any information to investigate, coupled with the fact that most of it occurs across state lines and even countries, it's difficult for any local/state law enforcement to investigate. That and the victims are rarely out anything other than an inconvenience. Hard to justify spending resources on something without a real victim.
 
Qinsp said:
Police do not investigate normal auto thefts in most cities anymore. One of our trucks were stolen, we had video, and knew who did it. They did not check for fingerprints, or even look at the video, or interview the suspect. "You have insurance, let them handle it."

Same is true for burglary and identity theft.
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Where the hell are you from? Some failed former Soviet state?

It makes me glad that the police here still police things. The police investigate all of those things here, because that's what they're for.
 
Phoenix333 said:
Considering a lot of car chases are for stolen vehicles, if the thief's DNA is in the car (and it will be) then that's enough to convict them. If it's not a stolen vehicle then odds are it's either fleeing a crime scene or there's a prior warrant. The GPS device can track the car long enough for a helicopter to get eyes on it and direct other officers to set up a roadblock and surround the vehicle. Then they can worry about the lawyers.

Point is, high-speed chases kill people and break stuff. If this cuts down on high-speed chases then it's a good thing.
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The CSI effect. The belief from popular media you need an iron clad chain of evidence linking the criminal to a crime for a conviction.
 
High-speed chases in Los Angeles are oten anything but high speed. There will be 15-20 police cars and a helicopter following a guy doing 25-50 mph. The police cruisers will stay back about 30-40 feet. They do not want to cause any property damage or take out the guy potentially causing damage or injury. They just follow until he or she gives up or runs out of gas. They have used the PIT maneuver and spike stripes, but it doesn't seem to come up right away. Seems to be if they are driving really fast or dangerously. Chases are often hour+.
 
Southern California, Corona PD and Riverside County Sheriff.

Better list:

Guy starts a Dell account in our name and orders $25k worth of goods. Has it listed to deliver to an address 20 miles away, in the PD juristiction. Dell calls me, I cancel. I call Sheriff. Nothing.

Find trash dumped on our property including mail addressed to the resident. Nothing.

Employee photoshops paycheck and tries to cash it. Store apprehends her, she is released no charges.

Mailboxes broken into often. Riverside Hospital calls and says they are treating a guy for a serious wound, and found our mail (and others) in his pocket. There is blood on the mailbox and ground. I call the PD, the PD says Post Office. I call Post Office, they say PD.

Girl gets mangled by idiot driver in front of our farm. Girl was in front of car on shoulder, 8' from lanes. Driver crushed her legs. She is thrown into runoff ditch. I supply med attention, PD shows up and refuses to help. Does not investigate or arrest driver. No sobriety test.

Daughter and nephews hunting out back. Legally. Sheriff officers trespass without notification, and draw down on the kids with AR's, shotguns, and pistols. Tells them to drop their shotguns in the mud, then lay face down in mud. These are 12-16 year olds with legal hunting licenses. Officer threatens to arrest me when I ask to speak with his boss.

3 am, lights shine in bedroom. I go out, and there is a Honda Civic on my front lawn with the engine running. There is a man slumped over the wheel. Call cops. They find the guy is drunk, an illegal, no license. They drive him home. "We didn't see him driving!" "Uh, what about the car on my lawn? Isn't it illegal to park on people's grass?" "Not our problem." After going up the chain of command, they agree to impound the vehicle, only after I told them I'd use the tractor and drag it off my property and back onto the street.

Probably a few I forget over the decades, but if you are assuming the PD is your primary law enforcement entity, I'd suggest you forget that idea. That was 1960.
 
Qinsp said:
Police do not investigate normal auto thefts in most cities anymore. One of our trucks were stolen, we had video, and knew who did it. They did not check for fingerprints, or even look at the video, or interview the suspect. "You have insurance, let them handle it."

Same is true for burglary and identity theft.
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this. unless there was someone injured or killed they are not going to waste time and resources looking for prints/hair/dna and whatnot for a simple auto theft/break-in or home burglary when no one was home (this slides depending on the area of course...very affluent areas get a much higher level of reaction).

I am kind of surprised they didnt follow up since you had clear video of the suspect...thats an easy win that would be hard to pass up.
 
Why not just shoot the criminals? *I AM THE LAW* Pretty much sop nowadays.
 
True story:

Police cruiser behind my 20-speed English racing bicycle on the Interstate, we are doing 110mph plus and I am pulling away, pedaling like mad. Cruiser fires gps bullet which, miraculously, affixes itself to the sliver-thin chrome bumper covering the top half of my rear wheel. Cruiser falls back and I eventually lose sight of him, so I pull off on the side of the Interstate, kickstand the bicycle, knock off the bullet, climb back on and pedal away like crazy. I don't see the cruiser again, but coming from the opposite direction in the opposite lanes I see five more state cruisers, their lights flashing and sirens wailing, proceeding to the point behind me where the gps bullet lies on the side of the road. Technology is a wonderful thing.
 
pxc said:
Why not just shoot the criminals? *I AM THE LAW* Pretty much sop nowadays.
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In certain cases, I would indeed suggest you kill the criminal prior to them killing you.

Doing it afterwards is a lot more difficult unless you are a zombie.
 
Qinsp said:
SProbably a few I forget over the decades, but if you are assuming the PD is your primary law enforcement entity, I'd suggest you forget that idea. That was 1960.
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Absolutely. All they are now is a revenue-generator for whatever government they work for. Parking tickets. Speeding tickets. Any other little thing. Real people's muggings, thefts, and property damage? Hell no! They don't care.

1. When I was living with one of my sisters, the father of some of my niece's friends stole a bunch of stuff from us, including checks from both my sister and I. Cops wanted to charge my sister with all the thefts because the guy's mother-in-law was a high-up in the county human services division and it wouldn't look good for her daughter and her son-in-law to be up on charges. It was only because our respective banks said "No, she did not write the checks" (the idiots were stupid enough to write all the checks to themselves) that my sister wasn't charged.

2. I had an 88 Caddy Brougham. It was stolen. Cops never looked for it.

3. I got mugged (guy didn't get anything). Cops never looked for the guy.

But the cops could sure issue me a parking ticket or two!

Yeah....the cops are there only to generate revenue. They aren't interested in protecting and serving.
 
This would require cops being able to shoot a moving target with what amounts to an air powered rpg. Yeah, that ain't happening.
 
About 20 years ago, my dad had his car stolen from a convenient store parking lot while a cop sat there and watched it happen. When my dad tried to get the cop to go after the car, the cop told him he couldn't do anything unless my dad could prove the car was his (kinda hard with the registration in the car). One of dad's friends drives up while this is going on, so dad and his friend start to go after the guy, the cop threatens to arrest them if they do.

The thief is caught the next day after robbing a convenient store. The cops show up at our house and want to arrest dad for providing the guy with his get-away vehicle. Luckily one of them had some sense to realize what had happened and they left.

Dad goes to pick up his car from the impound, only to find it up on blocks with no wheels and no battery. Cops told him they found it that way. So apparently the thief was going to use a wheel-less car with no battery to flee a robbery. Plus they never bothered to charge the guy with the car theft.
 
Seeing as car accidents are the leading cause of death for police officers in this country I think any policy or tech that decreases the instances of pursuits to be a no-brainer. Not to mention to collateral damage involved in said high-speed pursuits. You only have to see your pregnant wife being cut out of her mangled car hit by a police cruiser once to come to that decision.
 
The dangerous part of that story, is that it's common, and most LEO's support the villain, not the officer who arrested him.

We are their subjects, and they are above the law.
 
Even her immediate boss told her not to chase the idiot. He had done the same thing at least 80 times documented.

He had outrun LEOs many times before. Finally the head of the FHP put out a directive to stop them. The perp wasn't the only Miami cop doing it, and the FHP got sick of it.
 
Qinsp said:
Even her immediate boss told her not to chase the idiot. He had done the same thing at least 80 times documented.

He had outrun LEOs many times before. Finally the head of the FHP put out a directive to stop them. The perp wasn't the only Miami cop doing it, and the FHP got sick of it.
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So a few bad examples makes the 700,000+ cops in the country bad people? Come on. We get it you don't like Law Enforcement. Do you think everyone you work with in your industry is committed to giving 100% effort every moment of every day? It happens. Cops have bad days and have to deal with shitbags on a regular basis usually wasting their time with nonsense. Do you work a job where you can get shot for being more proactive and digging deeper by asking more questions? How about a job where you make a mistake when you have to make a split second decision and it could potentially be national news. 99% of the cops aren't out there to bother you.

You people like to whine about speeding tickets, but you're not the one cleaning up the mess when some guy driving 15 over the speed limit or drunk takes out another car. That happens on a daily basis. Cops killing people in chases? Not so much...an average of 120 a year nationally compared to 13,000 drunk driving deaths and around 40,000 regular automobile crashes. You have a better chance of accidentally falling off a ladder or being accidentally poisoned than being hit by a cop in a high speed chase.
 
Around here I've never heard of anyone being killed by a cop in a high speed chase. I've heard of a few people being killed by drunk driving cops though.

WaltC said:
True story:

Police cruiser behind my 20-speed English racing bicycle on the Interstate, we are doing 110mph plus and I am pulling away, pedaling like mad. Cruiser fires gps bullet which, miraculously, affixes itself to the sliver-thin chrome bumper covering the top half of my rear wheel. Cruiser falls back and I eventually lose sight of him, so I pull off on the side of the Interstate, kickstand the bicycle, knock off the bullet, climb back on and pedal away like crazy. I don't see the cruiser again, but coming from the opposite direction in the opposite lanes I see five more state cruisers, their lights flashing and sirens wailing, proceeding to the point behind me where the gps bullet lies on the side of the road. Technology is a wonderful thing.
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Liar - racing bikes don't have kick stands.
 
kirbyrj said:
So a few bad examples makes the 700,000+ cops in the country bad people? Come on. We get it you don't like Law Enforcement. Do you think everyone you work with in your industry is committed to giving 100% effort every moment of every day? It happens. Cops have bad days and have to deal with shitbags on a regular basis usually wasting their time with nonsense. Do you work a job where you can get shot for being more proactive and digging deeper by asking more questions? How about a job where you make a mistake when you have to make a split second decision and it could potentially be national news. 99% of the cops aren't out there to bother you.

You people like to whine about speeding tickets, but you're not the one cleaning up the mess when some guy driving 15 over the speed limit or drunk takes out another car. That happens on a daily basis. Cops killing people in chases? Not so much...an average of 120 a year nationally compared to 13,000 drunk driving deaths and around 40,000 regular automobile crashes. You have a better chance of accidentally falling off a ladder or being accidentally poisoned than being hit by a cop in a high speed chase.
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Blow me.

I've probably saved a few cops lives over the years. I'm not anti-cop. Many of my neighbors and friends are cops, and they agree with some of my issues. The older they are, the more they agree. It's going downhill.

I blame the lawyers, the courts, and the government for putting cops in a position where doing nothing is safer than doing their job.

As far as other occupations go, LEO's are neither saints or sinners. If I make a mistake, hundreds, thousands, or millions can die. Seriously. If I say a heart valve is good when it is not, how many die? Or an aircraft part? Or a nuke?

But taxi drivers and liquor store workers are killed more than cops. As are firefighters and 8 other occupations.
 
GaryJohnson said:
The guy in the story you posted got caught, stopped, and fired though - so I don't really understand how you're coming to that conclusion.
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Not the first, second, or third time. Only went it became national issue did they take action.

Even today, many LEO's don't believe he was in the wrong.
 
kirbyrj said:
Tells me everything I need to know about you...

/thread
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You people like to whine about speeding tickets, but you're not the one cleaning up the mess when some guy driving 15 over the speed limit or drunk takes out another car. That happens on a daily basis. Cops killing people in chases? Not so much...an average of 120 a year nationally compared to 13,000 drunk driving deaths and around 40,000 regular automobile crashes. You have a better chance of accidentally falling off a ladder or being accidentally poisoned than being hit by a cop in a high speed chase.
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This is the attitude of many LEO's today. You can drive 120mph off-duty, and it's not significant. Because Its Rare.

As someone far more training and experience at speeds over 150mph, there aren't a lot of Crown Vics that should be swerving in traffic at that speed on street tires by idiots.

Yeah, I've ran a Crown Vic around a race course and at the Bondurant School. That guy was an asshole and anyone who sides with him is an asshole.

He did that more than 80 times before some chick scared the shit outta him.

Go fucking cry about. A chick made him lose his balls then his badge. Simply because he was an arrogant yet shitty driver.
 
Funny, has two stolen cars, a break in with a nominal value of goods missing. All instances cops investigated and got my car back both times as well as a good portion of my stolen goods.
 
The future is now. Non-lethal solutions to crime are very welcome. Now, i just hope the cops know when they track the wrong vehicle.
 
Well, I had one of my cars stolen in Tucson, AZ. Called the cops about it when I found out when I went to leave for work the next morning.

They tell me that somebody will be over in a few minutes (the closest station was about 5 minutes away IF I was to walk to it). Waited more than half an hour, nobody ever showed up.

So I went over to the station and talked to them... stupid idiots!!!!

So they find the car a few days later out in the desert somewhere and call me. I asked if I could come get it and they told me no, it had to be towed.

So I go to the impound yard on the other side of town to pick it up and there was a bunch of stuff in my car that wasn't mine and the stereo had been ripped out.

I go to the PD office that found it and try to turn in all the crap as evidence. They wouldn't take it and said that it was most likely stuff that had been stolen by the perps. There was even a slim jim in the car which is what I am guessing that they broke into my car with. FREAKING IDIOTS!!!!!!!!!

So I drive my car home and it ended up that the perps blew out both front shocks and screwed up more of the front suspension. It took me 3 days working on it to get it back to being driveable for work.

So yeah, I have absolutely almost no faith in cops for the most part.

I also agree with the sentiment that they are just out to make their quota in tickets each month, especially when you can be going 4 or 5 over the limit and they will pull you over and give you a ticket when there were multiple vehicles going 10+ faster than you were. Easy target, easy money.
 
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