If you live in an urban area, you’re likely familiar with the annoyance police helicopters can bring to a peaceful evening. Still, most of us recognize the usefulness of police helicopters helping ground patrols locate their suspect. Oklahoma’s Tulsa Police Department have begun using GPS technology to help make police chases much faster and safer. Not only do the police and us citizens benefit from getting suspects in custody sooner, but the GPS navigation helps get those helicopters out of the sky a lot quicker.
“The use of that new system on the helicopter really guided us to catch a suspect tonight we may not have otherwise,” Sgt. Matt McCoord said. He’s referring to a police chase that occurred after a suspect refused to pull over for a traffic stop. McCoord was in the helicopter, guiding ground police to the 26-year-old suspect.
Police helicopters have a thermal camera mounted under the cockpit, which displays images on a screen for the pilot to study and locate the suspect. WIth this new system, a GPS device is equipped to the camera, which is connected to a computer system that overlays street names, addresses and/or landmarks on top of the images from the thermal camera. “In a pursuit, things are happening so fast that time is real critical,” explained Sgt. Nick Cory. “Before we would have to go, ‘Well, they’re behind a house, third house from the corner on the east side of the road.” The program is called ARS, for Augmented Reality System.
“Lots of times when we’re flying the patrol officers ask us which helicopter we’re in because they’re hoping we’re in one with this ARS system in it,” said Cory. The system costs $150,000 per helicopter, so the TPD could only afford to equip one of their choppers with ARS technology. The system reportedly is very popular and effective, almost paying for itself already, so the department is hoping to add ARS to their other helicopter.
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Tulsa Police Helicopter Gets Heads Up On Criminals WIth GPS Technology
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