Laptops, tablets and smartphones play a vital role in an officer’s arsenal of tools. As the technology continues to progress, the devices are becoming more configurable and include features that are keeping officers safe while they are doing their jobs.
Marc Claycomb, a retired commander with the Melbourne Police Department in Florida who joined Panasonic Connect as a business development manager, recently spoke to OFFICER Magazine about how mobile devices assist law enforcement officers in being more efficient while also giving them more situational awareness in and out of their patrol vehicles.
Ever-changing technology
During his 30-year career in law enforcement, Claycomb was an avid user of technology—especially during the later part of his career. “I was a proud Panasonic customer and an avid Panasonic customer,” he says. “Most of our use had been with the (TOUGHBOOK) CF-53s, CF-54s and ultimately the CF-55s before I retired.”
Melbourne also used Panasonic’s Arbitrator in-car video system when it first hit the market, giving the department a full bumper-to-bumper solution.
Claycomb admits that rank-and-file officers are less concerned about how the technology works, only that it works. “The boots-on-the-ground cop doesn’t care about the processor and the other innerworkings,” he says. “The IT folks certainly do, but the cops just want to know that they are going to be connected and that it’s going to work when they need it to. If they happen to drop it out of the car getting the 10,000 things they need to bring in and out of their mobile office, that it’s still going to work.”
Changes to technology are exponential year-over-year with the big focus—even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic— on moving toward mobility. Claycomb says that the goal is to get officers out of vehicles to communicate and interact with the public and become more efficient and effective at their jobs and not just sit inside their mobile offices.
“That became even more important during the COVID pandemic, and certainly after that, because we are experiencing incredible reductions in staffing,” he says. “We always hear ‘We need to do more with less.’ The reality is: You can’t do more with less, you can do the same with less or you can less with less, unless you change the way you do business.”
He says that with the mobility of technology and computing, law enforcement agencies can enhance the ability of their workforce, even when working with a limited staff.
Mobile devices in the field
Through the use of handhelds like Panasonic’s N1 Tactical, which has the ability to support scanners, officers can use it as a department-issued phone while also reading driver’s licenses with the device. “By doing that, you could actually walk up to a car, make one contact, not leave in a single interaction while watching the driver in the car without having to retreat from it to go back to your car and re-approach,” he says. “You can complete what would normally take 11 minutes for a traffic stop in two or three minutes.”
By using the tetra-array microphone system on the TOUGHBOOK 55 or TOUGHBOOK 40 that includes voice dictation, also helps address officer safety. For midnight shift officers writing reports while inside a patrol vehicle backed into a closed business in order to maintain cover, this feature adds an extra layer of safety. “By having the ability to dictate an entire report, it gets done faster, more completely, more correctly and you are able to maintain eye contact and keep your head outside of the vehicle the entire time you write that report,” says Claycomb.
As technology becomes more mobile, it is making work on the streets more efficient. “It gets you off the side of the road faster, allows you to complete the traffic stop faster and maintain connection with potential suspects and or drivers who are getting infractions,” he says. “I think you are going to continue to see that as new technology comes out and the speed at which we are able to transfer larger amounts of information, the efficiency and effectiveness will play a big part in officer safety as well.”
Customization
The modularity included in new products is extending the life of devices, saving law enforcement agencies money and allowing for more continuity. “Historically, technology advances so quickly,” says Claycomb. “In a year, it becomes obsolete”
A lot of agencies still rely on DVD-based training. The newer TOUGHBOOKs include a DVD player, but if that department decides to go to streaming-based training, it can remove the DVD player and use that spot to install biometrics in its place. “I can put in a smart card reader, I can put in a laser scanner,” he says. “I don’t have to buy a whole different machine to get a different layout.”
Customization also allows agencies to have one layout for patrol and another for detectives, for example.
The introduction of 5G
With smart cities and full 5G coming into view in the not-so-distant future, the speed of data transfer will have a great impact on how policing is done, according to Claycomb. “It allows you to have real time information transfer in way we have never seen,” he says. “It’s going to continue to change dramatically and even at the rate it is going now, it changes exponentially year-over-year. That’s going to increase by multiple factors once 5G comes in and we have the ability to use that to our advantage.”
Claycomb estimates that full 5G availability will become a reality in the next 2 to 3 years and says that Panasonic Connect is already producing 5G-capable products for law enforcement. “We are limited by only our own creativity at that point once 5G comes into play,” he says.
