Yardarm Develops a Device That Can Track a Cop’s Gun in Real Time

  • Post author:
  • Reading time:3 mins read

Tracking cops and their activities is not new. Positions of police vehicles are always tracked. Cops are also required to report their situations, when they are not ordinary, in real time. But never before has a cop’s gun been tracked. With Yardarm’s sensor, tracking a cop’s gun is not only a possibility but a reality right now. California and Texas already have the sensor on the ground for testing. If the sensor works well, then the two states may adapt the technology and put to use. Police departments of other states may follow suit.

Yardarm has developed a sensor that is installed in the Glock sidearm. It can track a gun and every shot fired. It can track the position of a gun, whether it is holstered or un-holstered, if a shot has been fired, which direction the gun is being pointed at all times including at the time of shooting and several other technical information about how the gun was used or is being used. All this data is assimilated and wirelessly reported to a central database which can be monitored by senior officers or police commanders in real time.

The primary purpose of the Yardarm sensor is to track the activities of a cop in relation to the gun. After deadly shootings by cops in several occasions in the past and policy behavior coming under intense scrutiny, the sensor certainly comes at an appropriate time. But what the sensor doesn’t do is shed light on other aspects which are equally important.

The sensor will offer information as to whether a cop fired the gun, whether it had hit the target that was intended, when the gun was drawn which could indicate if a firing was premeditated or instantaneous as in a reaction and many such realities which could be used in favor or against the cops, victims and suspects in any case.

While the information being gathered and furnished is helpful, it still doesn’t allow any information pertaining to what leads a cop to draw the gun, if efforts were made to deescalate a situation and if a cop had the right intentions. Such factors will remain to be in the grey but at least the guns would be tracked and their whereabouts would be known.

The Yardarm device is a step in the right direction and if it works, all police departments should adapt this tech.

forbes.com