Technology continues to develop at rapid pace, and law enforcement agencies across the country including the Amarillo Police Department are using these advancements to assist in catching criminals and tracking relevant data in their communities.

APD Chief Ed Drain recently teamed up with the Texas Department of Transportation, who will provide the department with more data on crash types, location, and cause. Analyzing that information from TxDOT assists in public safety, as APD is able to send more traffic patrol to certain areas in hopes of cutting down accidents and fatalities.

Early reports on the data indicate most accidents in the city occur along Amarillo Boulevard, and in the southwest part of the city along Soncy Road and Coulter and Bell streets.

We were retaining some of this data in our records, but our system does not have the ability to provide and compile it into the highly useful, comparative information the way TxDOTs does, APDs Sgt. Brent Barbee said. Being able to look at collision data allows us to develop and implement strategies to prevent the accidents, save lives and property.

The department is using similar data from crime-mapping software to help with criminal incidents, which is used internally and passed on to federal and state agencies. Data mined from the new mapping technology also includes details about the crimes such as type, time, date, motivation, offender and victim information, as well as property involved.

The new technology is a far cry from using pin maps, where an officer placed a pin on a physical map to locate where a crime had occurred.

Crime mapping is a major part of analysis in an effort to prevent crime, Barbee said. A long time before computers existed at police departments, pin maps showing locations of crimes were visible somewhere in every police department. Mapping is one tool to help make decisions about how to deploy officers or other resources including education in prevention measures. Modern mapping software allows law enforcement to view more than just locations of crimes over a short period of time, so it is considerably more effective than a pin map.

The new data also allows APD to be aware of changing trends in the city both in terms of what types of crimes happen most often, as well as where they happen in the city.

The data that we watch shows things like clusters of auto burglaries or home or business burglaries by area, Barbee said. We can watch it move or shift, often week to week, but can also see consistency in some things such as auto burglaries along I-40 or on I-27 near major intersections, for example. Mapping is not needed necessarily to see what is most common, but where and when it most common.

The trend of adding advanced technology is expected to continue for APD.

A new radio system will be in place in March 2018. The new radios which have been approved for APD, Amarillo Fire Department and other civil departments that need them will switch from analog signals to digital, eliminating dead spots in the city that could not be reached with current radios.

There is one major piece of technology APD covets but has yet to secure body cameras, which were recently added to the digital repertoire of the Potter and Randall county sheriffs offices.

The biggest obstacles keeping APD from getting the cameras are costs and technology limits, according to the City of Amarillos director of information technology, Rich Gagnon.

A measure on the November ballots would have given APD the money needed to update in-car computers through which body cameras would run, as well as the money to upgrade the citys data storage system, but the ballot failed to pass.

There is no set time frame for when APD may receive body cameras.

The primary technology interest we have right now body worn cameras, Barbee said. They provide valuable documentation of what an officer and others see and do, including the discovery of evidence. The cameras are an expense, but the most significant expense is the storage for the massive amount of video they will generate.

New law enforcement trend in Chicago

The Chicago Police Department has expanded a technology called ShotSpotter, which uses sensors placed in neighborhoods that can help police detect any time a gun is fired, according to Associated Press reports. The data from those sensors is then sent to smartphones officers carry, as well as their in-car laptops, so officers know within seconds when and where shots were fired from.

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New technology helping APD track, prevent crimes in the city - Amarillo.com