UK Police use of GPS

robo283 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 30, 2005 Posts: 3

I am researching the use of GPS by police forces in the UK for a magazine article. Can anyone tell me of any police force in the UK that has installed GPS in patrol vehicles?

Darren · Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 2:59 pm Post subject:

Avon & Somerset's Armed Response units use Navman iCN650's and Surrey have equipped all their Area and Beat cars with GO units.
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Darren Griffin

MarkHewitt · Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:19 pm Post subject:

I was watching "Trouble in store" the other night which featured Northumbria police trying to find the house of a suspect and they ended up getting totally lost for about an hour, while one of them desperately tried to navigate using an A-Z. I kept thinking, why don't they have sat nav? Considering the equipment they already have in there I don't think it would be a great expense.

Darren · Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:45 pm Post subject:

When I was serving we were expected to know our patch, A-Z's were only ever needed when assisting neighbouring divisions.

Having said that, it makes locating addresses a lot easier, you can set off to the area whilst the passenger inputs the address. Or create a POI set for all the local toe rags ;) (A very big POI!!).

Better still would be a custom set-up that allowed the control room to task the car and have the destination address automatically configured, possible already with the correct kit.
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Darren Griffin

mukit · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 16, 2004 Posts: 6

I know its not strictly what you want to know but East Anglian Ambulance use Sat navs in all of their front line vehicles, a real life saver!!

MarkHewitt · Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2005 8:39 am Post subject:

Darren · Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2005 9:01 am Post subject:

LQA · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 30, 2005 Posts: 12

All UK forces are migrating to 'Airwave' radios. Each radio handset has GPS facility...not to find out where you're going but for control rooms to monitor where you are, or where you left your radio ;)

Skippy · Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 12:38 pm Post subject:

I saw a London Police car yesterday and it had a 8 inch screen in it. I presume it was a combined sat nav/dispatch system.
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Gone fishing!

amcluesent · Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 5:08 pm Post subject:

>I am researching the use of GPS by police forces<

Why not give the Police IT Organisation a ring (020 8358 5555) and ask them? It's a PITO team that is co-ordinating the rollout of Airwave.

robo283 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 30, 2005 Posts: 3

Good suggestion re:PITO but I suspect that because it is bought-in technology it is a matter of individual choice for each force, possibly even for each BCU.

amcluesent · Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 11:31 am Post subject:

>it is a matter of individual choice for each force,<

For Airwave, I'm minded Force's are obliged to buy from a limited range of approved terminals listed on a framework agreement drawn-up between PITO and the vendors. Agreed, that for other kit the Forces can do their own thing, and they do Sad

robo283 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 30, 2005 Posts: 3

Yes, it's true about Airwave but that is a restricted system, rather than being available to any consumers who choose to spend what's left of their post-tax dosh on it!

Airwave is a worthy of a whole topic on its own. We also have 'Blackberry' which at the moment is able to let us access our e-mails at home on Rest days (no one seems to have asked why on earth this is an advantage for us). It has greater scope in the future for data transfer, photos etc when the legislation catches up with it, and presumably mapping could interlink with GPS which would be useful. Perceived wisdom on the shop floor is that a Tomtom Go in each police car would be more beneficial than a gadget that allows us to get stressed out at home about the latest influx of e-mails Laughing

northants_guy · Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2005 2:16 pm Post subject:

I'm surprised that more forces aren't putting a system like tt go into use, with the lowering of local police presence (in my own area, our local police station has closed and the nearest ones are both 10 miles away) any officer who goes into our village could easily lose track of where there going as there are so many "rat runs".

Anything that assists the emergency services in general should be rolled out as fast as possible - after all, if the kit saves 1 life in all it's use it's worth it.

Diplo · Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2005 5:12 pm Post subject:

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