Sixteen-hundred members of Jacksonville’s law enforcement community will have extra help today – something that will make them safer and more effective on the job. Not more officers on patrol. Not bigger and more powerful guns. Jacksonville has obtained a new and unique technology that will assist in making police radios one of the most effective tools in law enforcement, a technology developed by a leading Florida high-tech firm.
Locus Location Systems announces the successful implementation of the SafePoint Radio Location System for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO). This initiative is designed for Officer Safety, tracking 3,400 portable and mobile radios without disrupting their existing Motorola trunked radio network.
SafePoint is crucial for identifying the location of an officer in an emergency and relies on advanced triangulation and RF Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) technology.
“Personal danger is a very real threat in the daily activities of the department’s officers,” said Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford, “and having a system which will show the location of an officer in an emergency or life-threatening situation helps to make officer safety a priority.”
This system, installed throughout the entire 875 square mile area of Jacksonville, and the TrackerX mapping application, which is being used on 220 Patrol Supervisors’ Mobile Data Terminals, is a tool that enables supervisors to manage their resources on patrol. In the Communications Center, dispatchers view the location of the Patrol and Special Detail personnel who use portable and mobile trunked radios throughout the city, handling well over one million calls each year. The SafePoint System, available exclusively from Locus Location Systems, allows dispatch to deploy officers more effectively, reducing response times for calls-in-progress.
“As soon as the SafePoint System receivers were installed, we were tracking over 12,000 portable and mobile radios from multiple agencies simultaneously, without having to touch any of them,” said Lee Mathis, IT Analyst for Radio Communications for Jacksonville. The SafePoint system can include administrative integrated services such as: locating lost and stolen radios; a radio waveform diagnostic tool; incident reconstruction; and the identification and location of unauthorized radios and users.
SafePoint’s unique approach does not require additional RF resources. This smart sensor technology cannot be disabled and allows an unlimited number of radio transmitters to be located and displayed simultaneously. The SafePoint System is the only cost-effective solution for portable radio location without the purchase of additional radio equipment. It may also be expanded seamlessly for additional agency use and system migration. This system offers a location visualization display in real time, can be integrated into existing CAD maps, Mobile Data Terminals and emerging electronic video surveillance cameras.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) is one of the few Triple Crown Accredited law enforcement agencies in the country. JSO currently employs approximately 1,600 police officers, 700 correctional officers, and 700 civilian personnel.
Systems are currently being installed in Collier County (Naples, Florida) and Miami-Dade County, the City of Miami and the City of Hialeah. Additional applications include solutions that provide multi-floor location in public buildings and, for the nation’s shipyards, an in-port cargo container tracking system. This same technology will track supplies and assets in military installations and is superior to the implementation of RFID devices.
For more information, contact Locus Location Systems at (321) 727-3077 or email [email protected].
