SALT LAKE CITY — While the phrase "evolving technology" may make us think of whatever new iPhone is coming out next, there's more to it than that.

Ever-evolving police technology makes both officers' and our own lives safer and more efficient.

I spent an evening shift with officer Glenn Giles of the Orem Police Department to get a first-hand look at how technology helps officers do their job and return home safely.

Car

Any talk of police tech begins with the patrol car. While the Chargers, Explorers and Crown Victorias used by the Orem Police Department look much like the ones civilians drive, the differences are stark.

The cars used by police have performance, handling and tire upgrades that keep them safe when pursuing those who don’t want to be stopped. Combined with the pursuit training officers receive, their cars provide an advantage when compared to those driven by civilians.

The Ford Crown Vic Police Interceptor model that Giles drives daily is all-wheel drive, an obvious advantage over the civilian model and especially helpful during Utah’s winters.

“Handling is absolutely what stands out with this car beyond everything else,” Giles said. “At speeds over 100 miles an hour, it feels like the car is absolutely in control and safe.”

Another standout feature of Ford Police Interceptor models is the rear crash rating. Police cars are designed to keep occupants safe with a rear impact of 70 mph. This is crucial when officers have a car pulled over in traffic with their rear bumper exposed to oncoming traffic. Civilian cars, by comparison, are typically tested at 25 mph.

Police cars also have a much higher demand for electricity than a typical car. The cars are wired with overhead lights, radios, computers, dashboard openings, tunnels and brackets that don’t exist on civilian models. An additional battery helps power everything when the car isn’t running or will be idle for a long time.

Cars can also be outfitted with safety features such as bullet-resistant door panels, which have long been a point of urban legend. While the Orem Police Department doesn’t outfit all cars with that particular feature, some of their vehicles do provide officers additional protection for particularly dangerous situations.

Communications

The Orem dispatch center handles 911 calls for both Orem and Lindon’s police and fire departments. The Orem Police Department is available to assist Lindon when needed. While Orem will have anywhere between eight and 16 officers on duty at any one time, Lindon may only have four.

As a result, the dispatch center must effectively communicate with officers and firefighters in two cities at once, and Orem officers must be aware of Lindon calls that could require their assistance.

Orem police officers can hear calls from dispatch verbally, both from their car radio and a wireless ear piece receiving calls via a body-mounted radio. As a passenger in the car, I could hear what officer Giles was hearing via his earpiece.

Whether inside or outside the car, an officer has redundant verbal communications with the dispatch center. Dispatch communicates with an officer responding to a call or making a traffic stop every five minutes unless the officer halts these safety checks during a lengthy interaction with the public.

Officer Giles’ car-mounted laptop computer also contained a listing of all current calls for the shift and what cars had taken them. This particular evening, Giles was the cover car for the northern half of the city and could not only take calls and make traffic stops, but was primarily responsible for backing up other officers as calls came across.

While Orem police officers ride one per car, there is constant communication between officers, both verbally and via instant chat through a program provided by Spillman Technologies. This enables officers to know where others are, and to assist as needed. It was common during the shift to have two, even three, officers respond to a call.

The laptop can also communicate with virtually every other form of technology in the patrol car.

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Years ago, communication between agencies like Lindon and Orem was unlikely, but these days technology allows for multiple agencies to coordinate efforts both in large-scale emergencies and day-to-day.

Officers are also able to use multiple channels to more effectively communicate with one another in situations where not every officer is involved in a particular emergency. Orem officers, for example, can communicate with the Utah Highway Patrol or Utah Valley University Police on a less-trafficked channel when warranted.

Cellphones also play a large part in an officer’s ability to communicate with other officers and the public. The dispatch center can have officers call a member of the public rather than respond in person to assess a situation that may not be an emergency. In one case, officer Giles communicated with several parties via cellphone regarding a complaint from an Orem mental hospital without having to visit multiple locations in order to assess the details of the case.

Cellphones can be a double-edged sword in police work, however, and their increased use by the public causes the Orem dispatch center frequent difficulties. When a 911 call comes from a landline phone, the location of the caller is easily identifiable, which assists dispatch and officers with a timely reaction to the call.

Cellphones contribute to an estimated 50 percent error rate on 911 calls, both in terms of pinpointing the location of the call and the fact that civilians often mistakenly call 911 much more frequently from cellphones than from landline phones. Combined with non-emergency calls received, the dispatch center is frequently challenged to prioritize calls and officer response.

Cameras and radar

Much of what’s happening in a patrol car is coordinated and happening automatically. The radar gun mounted on the driver’s side of officer Giles’ patrol car is always on and can take readings from both oncoming traffic and from cars behind him. Audio and visual alerts notify the officer of the fastest speed among oncoming vehicles, for example, and officers then visually identify the speeder from the cars approaching.

The dashcam is mounted above the dash near the rearview mirror and records automatically whenever an officer turns on his overhead lights. The camera is running on a constant loop and saves recordings 30 seconds before the lights are turned on. This allows police to record drunk driving violations and demonstrate why the vehicle was pulled over.

The dashcam is integrated with the laptop in the patrol car, and the recording is saved in both places and can later be accessed by the officer to view when completing reports of the incident. Officer Giles showed me an example of an arrest from the night prior on the dashcam itself.

When the stop is completed, officer Giles can then dispose of the call from the dashcam, which both ends the recording and updates the call status on the laptop. The officer uses a drop-down menu on the dashcam to notate whether the stop ended in a citation, arrest or warning. With these integrated technologies, an officer does not have to make multiple entries when beginning or ending a call or traffic stop.

When a citation is issued, it is printed on a Brother thermal printer, decreasing the chance of error and saving the officer from having to handwrite the ticket. Information gathered from license plate and driver’s license searches, as well as the location of the stop, auto populates into the ticket form.

The Orem Police Department also issues officers body cameras that run, along with the dashcam, and record audio from a body-mounted microphone. Both dashcam and bodycam are recording different views of an event. Sound is recorded both inside and outside of the patrol car as officers move about.

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Software

The Spillman Technologies program not only handles dispatch of calls and communication between officers, but allows for officers to link with state and national databases to search for license plate and driver’s license information for those they contact.

A plate number can be entered and the computer will return information about the registration and insurance status of the vehicle and who the registered owner is. Officer Giles explained that license plates are in public view and not protected by privacy laws. Officers can run any plate number in view and often do so when stopped at traffic lights.

The more knowledge an officer has about both the stopped vehicle and the driver, the safer the officer is. While it is legal for an officer to find out the name of a registered owner, it is illegal for them to run any information about the driver without probable cause.

In more than one case during my shift with officer Giles, it was evident that the registered owner wasn’t the one driving the car. While not a crime, it alerts an officer to potential circumstances that could be investigated if a traffic stop were warranted.

Driver’s license information is protected by privacy laws. Once a vehicle has been stopped and there is probable cause to obtain their license, then the officer can enter the license number in the Spillman system and obtain information about a person’s criminal history or outstanding warrants. It is also possible to enter names along with birth dates and get driver’s license and vehicle registration information.

Perhaps the single biggest surprise of all during the evening I spent with officer Giles was the number of people driving with expired plates or plates not matching the car they were registered to. There were many people driving without insurance.

We encountered one driver with an expired out-of-state license and expired Utah plates, which was not evident until officer Giles ran the number found on the registration “year” sticker on the plate. That sticker matches a particular vehicle in the same way a license plate does.

Personal protection

Officers, unfortunately, have to carry a great deal of gear on their person and in the patrol car to help protect themselves and the public from harm. A quick assessment of officer Giles’ utility belt found two pairs of handcuffs, one collapsible baton, two spare handgun magazines, one Taser, one radio and one Glock 9 mm handgun.

In his patrol car was a backup handgun, this time a Smith and Wesson, an AR-15 rifle and in the trunk a riot helmet and tactical vest. Officer Giles wore a bulletproof vest as part of his uniform.

Officer Giles commented on how Taser technology, particularly the battery, has improved in his 10 years of policing. According to Giles, tasers have gone from unreliable to being even more important than a handgun.

Suspects, particularly those who make criminal behavior a career, are often well-versed in the specifics of when an officer can and cannot fire their weapon and are often not moved to compliance by an officer simply drawing his weapon.

Taser use, on the other hand, is less strictly regulated and suspects are often more afraid of having a taser deployed than being shot by a gun, according to officer Giles. Suspects become compliant when facing a Taser.

I was mildly surprised by officer Giles’ response when I asked which piece of technology, above all others, had improved the most in his 10 years of policing and made his life as an officer safer or more efficient.

“My bulletproof vest, by far,” he said. “It must weigh a third of what my first vest weighed. It was miserable and hot in the summer, and this one stops all the same bullets in a much more comfortable way.”

Personal protection

Officers, unfortunately, have to carry a great deal of gear on their person and in the patrol car to help protect themselves and the public from harm. A quick assessment of officer Giles’ utility belt found two pairs of handcuffs, one collapsible baton, two spare handgun magazines, one Taser, one radio and one Glock 9 mm handgun.

In his patrol car was a backup handgun, this time a Smith and Wesson, an AR-15 rifle and in the trunk a riot helmet and tactical vest. Officer Giles wore a bulletproof vest as part of his uniform.

Officer Giles commented on how Taser technology, particularly the battery, has improved in his 10 years of policing. According to Giles, tasers have gone from unreliable to being even more important than a handgun.

Suspects, particularly those who make criminal behavior a career, are often well-versed in the specifics of when an officer can and cannot fire their weapon and are often not moved to compliance by an officer simply drawing his weapon.

Taser use, on the other hand, is less strictly regulated and suspects are often more afraid of having a taser deployed than being shot by a gun, according to officer Giles. Suspects become compliant when facing a Taser.

I was mildly surprised by officer Giles’ response when I asked which piece of technology, above all others, had improved the most in his 10 years of policing and made his life as an officer safer or more efficient.

“My bulletproof vest, by far,” he said. “It must weigh a third of what my first vest weighed. It was miserable and hot in the summer, and this one stops all the same bullets in a much more comfortable way.”

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