The New York Police Department is apparently, according to the New York Post, developing new technology that will allow officers to see if a person is carrying a weapon on their person from a distance of up to twenty five meters. Such a device would make life safer for both police and those they come into contact with, as it would allow officers to more easily tell whether someone they are approaching is armed on not.
According to the British newspaper, The Daily Mail, the new technology will use infrared technology to allow police officers to see through a person’s clothes to spot hidden weapons such as knives or guns. Thus, they say, it would relieve officers and suspects from having to undergo the “frisking” process to determine if a person is armed or not.
According to the paper, the technology works by measuring the energy that is emanated by a person’s body. If a weapon is hidden in a pocket, it would effectively block such emanations, which would alert the system to the presence of something thick, such as a gun, or knife. Of course it would also set off alarms if the person happens to have other heavy or metallic objects on their person as well, such as a flashlight, or even something as innocuous as a spoon, which many homeless people carry.
The Post reports that the NYPD has been working on the technology for approximately three years and has been working with the Department of Defense in the development. A portable scanner that could identify weapons would presumably be of use to solders in combat zones where it’s difficult to discern which people it encounters are enemies.
The Post also quotes Commissioner Ray Kelly as saying that the new scanner works well now at close range but still needs some work before it will be able to recognize weapons from a sufficient distance.
Once that goal is reached, police departments would attach the scanner to the top of an NYPD van, where it could be used to scan an area three hundred and eighty digress around the perimeter of the van. Also, once the new technology is implemented, research would continue because the department would really like to be able to give officers a device they could hold, like a stun gun, that could alert them to suspects hiding weapons.
In response to questions of whether such a scanner would violate a person’s privacy, the department currently has no comments.