Word: patroller
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Nonprofit organizations and individuals can help ease the burden for parks, saving states money by volunteering for typically salaried jobs, such as trail maintenance and trash patrol. Such is the case at Schodack Island State Park near Albany, N.Y. When the state announced last year plans to close the park for three winter months, local residents banded together and lobbied the state to let them assume responsibility for certain everyday operations and keep it open year-round. (Read "Indiana Dunes State Park...
...behind the wheel of your car, someone may be on to you. More and more cities are equipping patrol officers, toll booths and even access roads with computer sidekicks that can keep track of vehicle movements. By doing so, they are changing the face of 21st century law enforcement - and sparking debate over privacy issues...
Automated license-plate-recognition systems (ALPRs) mounted in patrol cars are capable of processing 1,500 license plates a minute, capturing a vast amount of data about the movements of both criminals and law-abiding citizens. For police, ALPRs allow them to solve auto-theft cases, pick up wanted felons or monitor the movements of sexual predators. But privacy advocates fear the collected data may be mined for other purposes. For example, one side of a divorce case could potentially look through toll-plaza records for circumstantial evidence of adultery. (See the top 10 crime stories...
...shift, Gomez says, a police officer traditionally could run perhaps 100 license plates through the system - calling the information in or typing into a computer, then waiting for a response. In comparison, says Gomez, the APLR system can process from 2,000 to 2,500 license plate "hits" per patrol car in that same 10-hour shift. (See the best inventions...
...scanners, which cost about $20,000 each, are mounted on a patrol car and use character-recognition software to read numbers and run them through databases. The LAPD has 26 scanners all over the city searching for stolen autos, cars associated with crimes and Amber Alert vehicles. In New Haven, Conn., police are using the scanners to track parking scofflaws, while Palm Beach County, Fla., uses the technology to follow gang members...