The International Association of Chiefs of Police hosts its 122nd IACP Annual Conference and Exposition on October 24–27, 2015, in Chicago, Illinois. With more than 14,000 law enforcement professionals expected to attend, IACP 2015 will be one of the year’s largest and most prestigious events for all sectors of the law enforcement community.

IACP 2015 also includes hundreds of companies and organizations that will display their products and services in the conference exhibition hall. Many of these companies will feature products or services newly or recently unveiled for law enforcement customers. Innovative technologies will abound, as will new items designed to help officers navigate the demands of the profession.

Cleared for Takeoff

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been literally gaining airspace in law enforcement. Though military-style “drone” vehicles remain controversial, several options exist that have the ability to help police departments handle any number of tasks more effectively and efficiently.

Aeryon Labs, based in Ontario, Canada, creates what it calls Small Unmanned Aerial Systems for civil, military, and other customers. David Proulx, Aeryon’s vice president of marketing and product management, pointed to multiple factors that demonstrated that UAVs may be poised for a larger breakout.

“There are important advances in the technology and an opening up on the regulatory side that are combining for an upswing in opportunities for law enforcement,” Proulx said. “They are a lot faster, a lot safer… and broader access to airspace is possible.”¹

One of Aeryon’s top models for law enforcement customers is the SkyRanger sUAS. At IACP 2015, Aeryon will showcase a new feature it added to SkyRanger this year: an HDZoom30 imaging payload. This camera can remotely capture images that are clear enough to recognize faces from a distance of 1,000 feet.

The vehicle itself packs a good deal of power as well, with the ability to fly for up to 50 minutes and up to 10 kilometers (or 6.2 miles) away from the operator and withstand wind gusts as high as 90 kilometers (or 56 miles) per hour.

The SkyRanger also requires no piloting expertise or takeoff or landing gear to operate. “We believe police forces should be able to trust a UAV the same way they trust a manned asset like an airplane or a helicopter,” Proulx said. “This is different from something you’d buy at a hardware store. Whether it’s day or night, high risk, rain or snow, it will accomplish its mission.”

Potential applications for UAVs range from surveillance to traffic control to search-and-rescue or disaster-response operations. In Ontario, the York Regional Police agency, which serves a population of more than 1 million, uses the SkyRanger to help traffic collision investigators map crash scenes, with the new process shaving hours off the time it takes to complete an investigation.

Regulations vary widely by state and country, but those regulations appear to be trending in favor of UAVs, their users, and their manufacturers. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration has established an interim policy allowing some use of UAVs, and Canada and Great Britain have taken similar actions. For example, the Michigan State Police are now allowed to use SkyRanger throughout the state for traffic accident reconstruction, search-and-rescue, and other select law enforcement operations.

Finding Patterns in the Chatter

Social media is ubiquitous and voluminous. A new tool can help police departments cut through the white noise to find localized information on crimes, including those that have not yet been committed.

The tool is Geofeedia, created by a Chicago-based tech firm of the same name, and it doesn’t take a social media whiz to use. “You don’t need to know how Instagram works to use Geofeedia,” said Phil Harris, the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “We wanted to set it up so that a middle school student could jump on and use it.”²

Created in 2007, but more recently rolled out for the law enforcement community, Geofeedia is a cloud-based social media management platform that allows users to monitor Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Picasa, and a host of other social media tools for specific keywords and hashtags. Geofeedia takes it to another level by allowing users to easily target those searches within a specified geographic area. This allows law enforcement professionals to spot trends in social chatter inside a given region to help learn more about recent or potentially forthcoming criminal activity.

“We help groups filter those networks by physical location and by keywords,” Harris said. “It can help public safety professionals across the spectrum, from gang activity to homicide to Internet crimes.”³

The Los Angeles County, California, Sheriff’s Department uses Geofeedia, according to Harris, to start gathering data as soon as a 9-1-1 call arrives on a violent crime like a shooting. “In 53 percent of instances, someone in that location has mentioned the word ‘gun,’” Harris said. “This kind of intelligence is amazing… It’s very rich but it’s also very narrowed. We’re helping to solve crimes.”⁴

With about 300 customers in the law enforcement space, Geofeedia, which sells its service as an annual subscription, is expanding its presence as a public safety tool. Along with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, the Chicago Police Department is also a prominent customer.

“Anyone with a smart phone is a reporter,” Harris said. “You eliminate the noise and find out where things happen and where they’re going to happen.”⁵

Filtering out that unnecessary chatter, Harris said, presented a “huge technology challenge.” But, when it came to creating an actual tool for law enforcement customers, making it accessible was a priority, just as much for those who had never even opened a Facebook account as those already immersed in the social media arena. Using police officers with less experience with social media as members of its development team, Geofeedia leadership came out with something that is simple for anyone to use. “We recognized early on that we had to make it remarkably easy to use,” Harris said. “Within 15–20 minutes, you can jump on and begin using it.”⁶ Geofeedia also hosts free webinars to demonstrate the product and its applications.

Built to Last

Several companies at IACP 2015 are touting the durability of their products for an environment where toughness is valued. However, precision and accuracy are even more vital when it comes to high-risk situations that require an officer to draw a firearm—and, at night or in dark spaces, visibility is another essential element.

Laser sights help on most of these fronts, but these sights can sometimes be bulky, heavy, or flimsy, failing on the durability factor. Three new products from TRUGLO, Inc., a company headquartered in Texas, help mitigate these problems.

One of TRUGLO’s signature sights, the TruPoint Laser/Light Combo, combines a red or green laser sight and a flashlight in the same housing, and its aircraft-grade aluminum construction ensures durability and lightness. The typical cleaning agents also won’t corrode the materials over time. “[The sights are] every bit as durable as factory sights,” said Pliny Gale, TRUGLO’s product marketing manager. “You can use your sidearm and clean it over and over. The cleaning chemicals won’t damage it.”⁷

The TruPoint’s laser technology is pulled from TRUGLOs’s Micro-Tac Tactical Micro Laser, Gale said. Weighing less than one ounce, the device emits a high-efficiency superconductor laser diode.

“When you need to draw any time, you’ll see the point of impact from the laser, and it doesn’t add weight or bulk,” Gale said.⁸

The new XL-200P radio from Florida-based Harris Corporation, which was unveiled in August 2015, aims to improve durability and functionality in the tried-and-true police radio handset. The XL-200P blends high-speed data processing with robust voice technology, but has the added ability to act as a Wi-Fi hotspot to provide broadband access in the field. The XL-200P radios also may be upgraded to LTE broadband by adding a modem board, and features active noise cancellation, while exceeding the durability standards of comparable devices currently on the market.

The Hawk Combatives Training Partner certainly knows a thing or two about toughness, as well. Manufactured by Virtic Industries, headquartered in Pennsylvania, its creators claim it is the most realistic training or sparring partner outside of a real person.

The life-sized, externally anatomically accurate dummy has arms and legs with adjustable friction slide joints, which can hold specific positions as needed or move under the application of force. An internal skeleton also allows the Hawk to strike human-like poses without mounts and allows trainees to practice hand-to-hand combat or the use of just about any non-lethal force, including electronic control weapons and pepper spray.

These are just a few of the exciting new technologies and products to be found at IACP 2015—and, as a new feature this year, the conference will include an exposition-only block of time to allow attendees to visit the exposition hall without missing out on education sessions. ♦

Notes:
¹David Proulx (vice president of marketing and product management, Aeryon Labs), telephone interview, July 14, 2015.
²Phil Harris (co-founder and chief executive officer, Geofeedia), telephone interview, July 17, 2015.
³Ibid.
⁴Ibid.
⁵Ibid.
⁶Ibid.
⁷Pliny Gale (product marketing manager, TRUGLO, Inc.), telephone interview, July 20, 2015.
⁸Ibid.

Please cite as

Scott Harris, “Innovation on Display at IACP 2015,” Product Feature, The Police Chief 82 (October 2015): 70–72.