Police

Human memory is a notoriously unreliable thing that can be easily influenced. That’s good news for criminals and bad news for law enforcement agencies that often rely on eyewitnesses to provide a description of a criminal. Around the world, law enforcement agencies employ sketch artists to piece together faces in a process similar to assembling a Mr. Potato Head toy. The witness describes key features, such as hair length, nose size or sharpness of the chin, and the artist combines them to create a likeness. Research into psychology suggests that this kind of method doesn’t take into account how the memory actually works, so researchers have developed new software that helps witnesses recreate and recognize suspects using principles borrowed from the fields of optics and genetics.  Read More

We’ve seen a few exotic police cars in our time, but this is the first high performance diesel machine created for the constabulary and most likely the most luxurious, comfortable and economical into the bargain. Jaguar UK has launched a high performance Police pursuit vehicle based on its XF Diesel S model.  Read More

March 20, 2009 A number of robotic fish are to be trialled into the port of Gijon in Spain to evaluate how effectively and cost-efficiently they can detect water pollution. The 1.5 meter carp-shaped robots are part of a three-year research project funded by the European Commission and if successful, the fish could be used in rivers, lakes and seas across the world. The life-like creatures, which will mimic the undulating movement of real fish, will be equipped with tiny chemical sensors to find the source of potentially hazardous pollutants in the water, such as leaks from vessels in the port or underwater pipelines.  Read More

Carbon Motors is building the world's first purpose-built law enforcement patrol vehicle, the Carbon E7, so the announcement earlier this week that it would use L-3 Displays interface equipment in the E7’s On Board Rapid Command Architecture (ORCA) will probably impact most patrol officers at some point in the future. ORCA will replace the laptops that most officers are currently utilizing in their patrol vehicles to send and receive data while on patrol. That's the new Carbon E7 Cockpit pictured.  Read More

November 2, 2007 Police in East Sussex have added a Lotus Exige S to their arsenal as part of a campaign to promote road safety. The fully liveried Lotus police car has proved an ideal ice-breaker in opening up lines of communication and educating drivers in the high-risk group 17-25 age group.  Read More

July 6, 2007 We’ve previously examined an array of high-powered police cars from all around the globe and now a new contender may have emerged - the 612 Scaglietti, Ferrari’s flagship Grand Tourer will appear in special Police livery at Salon Privé’s Private and Luxury Super Car Show which opens on Wednesday 11th July in London. Though not in actual use, the car was recently driven over 1,500 miles by Police forces across the UK to lead the UK Leg of Ferrari’s 60th Anniversary Tour and to promote road safety messages.  Read More

June 3, 2007 Love them or hate them, TASER stun guns have become an essential and effective part of law enforcement armory. Perhaps their main drawback has been that even the long-range wireless shotgun-mounted TASER XREP puts a police officer within 30 feet of a potentially dangerous suspect before they're in range. Now, a new partnership between TASER and iRobot will see the construction of TASER-wielding robots that can be sent in to incapacitate violent suspects without ever exposing police officers to the risk of harm. What's more, TASER has released their Remote Area Denial (TRAD) system, an unmanned device that operates in a network to identify and incapacitate intruders in secured areas. It all points towards an interesting future with embedded moral implications; how long will it be until suspects are told "you have 15 seconds to comply?"  Read More

February 16, 2007 Lotus Cars Australia has donated a special new recruit to the NSW Police Bankstown Local Area Command with the arrival of a high performance Lotus Exige. The lightweight, high performance Lotus Exige sports car will be used by Bankstown Local Area Command for a number of community policing roles over the next six months, including most importantly, helping to build better relations between police and local performance car enthusiasts and youth. The precedent for this co-operation with the police was set in the UK where Lotus forged a similar relationship with the Norfolk Constabulary lending the force a Lotus Elise to achieve similar goals. “Following the success of the co-operation with Norfolk Police we saw the chance to link up with NSW Police to help it achieve similar goals,” said Lotus’ Jon Stretton. “The Norfolk Police had similar challenges to Bankstown Local Area Command with performance car enthusiasts and in establishing stronger relations to help prevent unacceptable behaviour.”  Read More

December 6, 2006 The Lamborghini Gallardo Police car we wrote up in 2004 holds the title for the world’s fastest police car in actual use – it prowls the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway at speeds up to 309 km/h in the hands of the Polizia di Stato (Italian State Police) but when the Brabus CLS V12 S Rocket appeared at the Essen Motor Show a few days ago, the bar got raised by some margin. In June this year German Performance Vehicle Manufacturer Brabus set a record for the world’s fastest sedan car when its 348,000-euro (US$437,575) Mercedes CLS-based Brabus Rocket, clocked an incredible 362.4 km/h at the famed Nardo test facility in Southern Italy. The new police vehicle on show in Essen is destined for police forces that need to be able to run down autobahn abusers. Throw in the specialist communications equipment and we doubt you’ll get much change from half a million US dollars, but you will be the fastest policeman in the world.  Read More