Technology is a powerful tool used to solve crimes. Cell phone records, computer searches, text messages -- all personal information that can be used by investigators.
There’s another device we use everyday that's helping law enforcement crack more cases-- our cars.
Some experts argue that our cars know us even better than our phones do. There are products out there helping police use that information to solve anything from thefts to homicides.
“They can store everything from GPS information, navigation data such as saved destinations, previous destinations, you can tell what phones have been connected to them, there are events they record things like doors opening and closing and gear shifts and whether the headlights were on or off,” explains Ben Lemere with Berla Corporation. “[It’s] 50 things that can really help law enforcement figure out what happened before, during, and after a crime.”
Berla Corporation, out of Maryland, started out downloading data from external GPS systems. But as cars grow more advanced so did their technology.
“What we found out was basically GPS data is present in modern-day vehicles but there's so much more data as well,” Lemere explained.
Green Bay Police have also noticed a technology shift.
“GPS’ years ago definitely weren't as accurate,” Capt. Jeremy Muraski explained. “In fact they used to have to be somewhat randomized because there was a national security concern. Now they're accurate to the foot or to the couple feet so they are tremendously accurate to try to find something we're tracking via GPS.”
Green Bay Police don’t use Berla’s system. But they are using similar GPS technology on multiple platforms.
“We use GPS in all of our squad cars to keep track of where our officers are. In the event of any kind of emergency it's nice to know. We do utilize GPS for our own internal purposes. The other thing is we sometimes use it for cases where, crime analysis, whether it be a homicide type of case or potentially a death or a fatal car accident.
In most cases, law enforcement must obtain the proper permission or court order before using the technology,” said Capt. Muraski.
In most cases law enforcement must obtain the proper permission or court order, before using the technology.
“We have to have the search warrant. Obviously privacy concerns, they don't just want police around putting a GPS on everyone's car just to see where they're going,” said Capt. Muraski.
The Berla systems are becoming more technologically advanced every year with every new model.
“If you look at the average age of a car in a crime for example, that's around about 2007, 2008 year car so as we're adding modern day vehicles, 2010, 2011, 2012 those cars will be on the road until 2030 something around there so it's good that we're starting now and beginning to build a really good base and the longer those cars on the road, the better we can support law enforcement community,” said Lemere.
Berla Corporation has thousands of law enforcement clients from local, state, federal, and even some international agencies.
Their product originally supported 80 car models but has since grown to over 46-hundred different car models.
