Warrenton Police Chief Greg Houdyshell compares the recent use of automatic vehicle locators to when officers first began keeping voice recorders in their uniform shirt pocket. While there was some hesitancy and mixed feelings about the recorders, their presence became valuable when incidents were debated or an officer’s professionalism was in question. “There was push back then, but officers have come to realize pocket recorders are their friend,” Houdyshell said. “This will help them out more than it hurts them.” Early last month, the police department began utilizing the satellite-based automatic vehicle locator system units to track the exact location of officers and the speed they are traveling. A unit has been placed in each of the department’s eight patrol cars with the information retrieved via computer. The real-time data is updated every 10 seconds and gives users a clear perspective of a vehicle location and speed. Houdyshell will be alerted by e-mail when an officer exceeds a speed set by himself to make sure a cop is responding to an emergency call in a reasonable manner and following department policy. The tracking units also help Houdyshell and other supervisors better manage the department’s patrol strategy. Houdyshell can review any specific date and time should an incident be questioned about an officer’s whereabouts. A playback option also is available to allow an officer’s patrol pattern to be reviewed for the entire 12-hour shift. “That is a lot of information there,” Houdyshell said. The vehicle locators, which cost the department just over $4,000 in its first year and will cost roughly $25 per month for each of the eight units, were approved by aldermen in November. They were purchased from Advanced Tracking Technologies. The need for the vehicle locators arose, in some part, due to two separate wrecks involving Warrenton police cruisers earlier in the year. In March, police officer Kyle Smith was responding to a domestic disturbance when he collided with another vehicle, killing the driver. According to a reconstruction report, Smith was driving somewhere between 87 to 99 mph when the crash occurred on Highway 47 and Ash Road. The family of the other driver, Donald Wood, was awarded $376,370 as part of a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the city. The settlement amount was paid for by the city’s insurance provider. Then in September, an officer joined a pursuit initiated by a sherifff’s deputy and lost control of the police cruiser and crashed on South Highway 47 outside of the city limits. “Those played into the decision, but from a management stance, they make a lot of sense,” Houdyshell said. “It increases the professionalism. It’s another step toward that.” He also added, “Any situation with speed and a police car are problematic. Something like this helps us deal with that problem.” Houdyshell said the GPS tracking has been so helpful in less than a month’s time that other city departments, particularly the public works department, may look into installing the units on snowplow trucks. During a demonstration last week, Houdyshell was able to track an officer patrolling along the North Service Road, while another car was involved in a traffic stop and became stationary for several minutes. Already, a review of the patterns found that there were some subdivisions being missed on regular patrols, a tweak that has been made to get more police presence in those previously ignored areas. “We want to make sure there are good patrol patterns happening,” Houdyshell said. “We will see what is going on with the patrol. “It will help track what the officer is doing and making sure our goals are being accomplished. Our goal is being out in the community.” As an added bonus, the new system will allow a maintenance schedule to be set up for each car and help make sure oil changes and tire rotations are done when needed. The system also will be utilized by Warren County 911 dispatch soon to help locate the police officer closest to a call and track officer safety. “That is one of the worst things to possibly happen,” Houdyshell said. “It gives us a starting point to see if they are having problems or having radio troubles.”