Police get high-tech help

Years ago, few police officers used computers. Today, they use all types of gadgets to help them solve crimes easier and faster.

“Technology has become a very constant element in the work that we perform in law enforcement, and through the years, it has grown in influence,” Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones said.

Law enforcement officials use technology to help them solve crimes, record information, communicate and stay safe, he said.

One type of tech tool they use is a mobile data terminal, a computer in each car linked to the dispatcher and able to access crime databases.

“Twenty years ago, if you’d told us, ‘You’re going to have computers in your cars,’ we’d be going, ‘Yeah, sure,’” Jones said. “But here we are.”

Other technologies that were used years ago have improved over the decades, he said. An infrared scanner that could only detect blobs of heat 30 years ago can now provide a clear image and even detect which car in a parking lot was last used.

Officer safety has advanced over the years, too, Jones said. Ballistics vests have come a long way, he said.

“The first one I had was late 70s, and it was bulky, it was heavy, it was uncomfortable,” Jones said. “It was just like you’re wearing two pieces of metal. It went from that to becoming more pliable materials… They’re often three times more effective in defeating projectiles. They have much higher safety levels and are a lot more comfortable to wear, better form-fitted… much more user-friendly.”

Computers have been vital tools for a while now, Jones said. Crime scene investigators can catalogue details more easily, and evidence often gets bagged and bar-coded for easy identification.

Technology’s role is only growing, Auburn police Capt. Tom Stofer said.

“It plays a bigger and bigger role daily in that we’re finding that technology makes our job much easier,” Stofer said. “Technology does in a hurry what in days gone by used to take us a lot of time to do.”

As the Auburn Police Division hires new, young officers, the division only gets more tech-savvy, Stofer said.

“The officers really like it,” Stofer said. “… There’s less paper files to maintain, a lot less digging for information when we have to look it up.”

Police can access federal, state and local crime databases in seconds, and more and more arrests are made outside local areas thanks to that capability, he said.

Opelika police dispatchers can see where every patrol car is, thanks to global positioning system equipment, Capt. Allan Elkins said.

“It cuts down on response time for our officers,” Elkins said. “That’s great. If you’ve got a car closer than the car assigned to that side of town, it’s cutting the response time down even further.”

But no matter how technologically advanced a law enforcement agency gets, there will always be a need for a human presence, Jones said.

“We can have all this technology that makes our job so much easier, but it still involves, at some point in time, the human element of contact, person-to-person,” he said. “No piece of technology is out there that would replace that. There’s still going to be a human element involved in that, and perhaps there should be. You can have all the technology in the world, but it’s not going to replace intuition.”

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