Police and the Telephone
During the early part of American police history, trying to get into contact with an officer was nearly impossible. Citizens had to, either find an officer on the street, which was is difficult even in society today, or head down to the police department house or file a complaint. The phone made a convenient way for the citizenry to communicate with their local police departments. Thru the development of the phone, local police departments around the world instituted the concept of the "call Box" or "police box". The first police telephone was installed in Albany, New York in 1877, one year after Alexander Graham Bell invented the device. Call boxes used by both police and members of the public were first installed in Washington, D.C. in 1883. Many cities soon followed suit (Wikipedia Police box, 2009). These were direct line telephones placed on a post which could often be accessed by a key or breaking a glass panel. Even though the telephone was invented in 1877, it was not until the concept of a standard emergency number that it became and essential role in police communication.
The use of the telephone has increased response time of police officers because people don't have to run down the station or find an officer when there is an emergency. In the past, phones were connected to a central location where an operator would connect lines so that people could talk, but now all people have to do is pick up the phone, dial 9-1-1, and they are immediately connected to a dispatcher, who is connected to police officers all over the state. The telephone has allowed people to rescued sooner and in most cases lives are saved a lot more due to the usefulness of the telephone.
Boys and their Toys
Police patrol vehicles started appearing just before World War I and were commonplace by the 1920's. Police patrol vehicles serve a variety of functions for peace officers. One function is to provide peace officers with an effective way to patrol their beat or area. Before the police patrol vehicles, peace officers would walk their beat sometimes making them hard to find and not visible to the public eye. Police patrol vehicles, while being highly visible, provide a sure and stable deterrence in the community. Most importantly, however, police patrol vehicles provide the means of transportation for the peace officer to respond to a call of service or emergency situation rapidly. The fact of the matter was that police needed to keep up with criminals and criminals were driving bigger and faster vehicles than they were. For these reasons the police patrol vehicle will be highly utilized by local and national police agencies for many years to come (Walker and Katz, 2008).
Cops and Their Toys Continued- The Rumbler!
In this new day and age of more cars on the road. Most cars have stereos, people are eating and driving, and overall there are more distractions in the car that most people don't pay attention to either see or hear police cars. To help avoid this, police departments allover the country are implementing "The Rumbler". The Rumbler is a new siren that creates a vibration in the cars around the officer who is using the Rumbler. Two sub-woofers under the car that the regular siren travels through to make a sort of block sound, impossible to miss by drivers, create the vibration. This makes a police officer's response time decrease because more citizens will be able to know he/she is coming down the road, and the Rumbler will increase the officer's productivity because the officer won't have to follow the citizen until they finally see the officer to pull over.
Walkie Talkie
Ever since its inception, the wireless radio has had almost unlimited possibilities. It took some of the brightest minds of the late 19th century to develop the basic technology for the wireless radio. The wireless radio was first used in the early 1900's and only took a few years for the technology to explode into the public scene, from public broadcasting to sending top-secret communications to other parts of the world. For many years now the United States Military has put radios in all their ships and planes, constantly upgrading the signals and cryptology of those signals. However, before wide spread use of the wireless radio, call boxes were used by local departments to send calls of service to peace officers. In 1923 the Victoria Police Department were the first in the world to use wireless communication in cars, putting an end to the inefficient status reports via public telephone boxes which had been used until that time. The first set of two-way wireless radio took up the entire back seat of the Lancia patrol cars (Wikipedia Two-way Radio, 2009). Then from 1930’s-1960’s every local police department in the world started implimenting wireless radio as a staple to the common peace officer. Wireless radio is now a standard component of the uniforms worn by peace officers world wide.
The Glendale Police Department (GPD) in Arizona first had a radio that took up the while back seat of the car, like the Lancia police. Then it progressed so that the whole front dash of the car had a radio that police officers could communicate. It continued to progress until the GPD got their first hand-held radio. This radio would sit and hook into the dash of the police car. When an officer got out of the car, they had to unhook it and carry it with them. It wasn't a small radio to carry either. When newer technology finally came out the GPD got their first hand radio. It was small, compact, and made it easy for the officer to call for back up, etc unlike before where if the officer forgot to grab the radio they were out of luck unless they had the chance to run back to the car. Now, the Glendale Police Department has the radios that clip the belt and they have a clip that goes on the officer's shoulder. The radios aren't heavy at all and they are highly convenient.
