It seems like a no-brainer: pocket-size computer phones costing a few hundred dollars instead of the expensive, awkward-to-use laptops Baltimore City police officers have been using up to now. The laptops basically turned the department's fleet of patrol cars into mobile offices where cops could go online to look up information about criminal suspects, stolen property and other intelligence stored in the department's database. The only problem was that using the system tied officers to their prowl cars as securely as they would have been tied to a desktop back at headquarters.
So you'd think Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III's plan to equip officers with BlackBerry smart phones would be welcomed as a great advance in the department's long-standing effort to get officers out of their cars and back walking the street. The handy, lightweight gadgets are small enough to clip onto a belt and give officers an unprecedented ability to instantly access the information they need to do their jobs and share data in real time wherever they are, not just inside the cramped quarters of a squad car.
That's why we're somewhat puzzled by the ambivalent reaction some officers and the police union seem to have to the introduction of the new devices, which theoretically will give police a mobility on foot that they haven't enjoyed in decades, while at the same time allowing them to remain in constant communication with their partners and district supervisors. But apparently that's just the problem.
One of the most salient features of the new phones is a global positioning system, or GPS, unit that uses signals from a navigation satellite high overhead to electronically fix the wearer's exact geographical location and display it along with the time and date. It also stores that information inside a computer chip so that it can be reviewed later, or an operator can "ping" the device from miles away and it will instantly transmit a response indicating its precise position on the globe.
That's got some patrol officers worried that the system will give district commanders and the brass downtown the ability to keep tabs on their whereabouts on a minute-to-minute basis and possibly lead not only to micromanaging their every move but also to endless second-guessing as to whether they were in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. Nobody likes to feel as if every step they take is being viewed through a microscope.
