Boston policemen complain about new plan to watch their movements

It looks like Boston’s Finest is going to be watched by its own. As the result of new contract negotiations between the City of Boston and the Boston Police Department, police cruisers will potentially be outfitted with GPS devices designed to monitor how cop cars move around the city. The contract includes some additional changes and still needs to be approved by the Boston City Council.

According to the Boston Globe, this new move would put Boston “in league with small-town departments across the state and big-city agencies across the country that have installed global positioning systems in cruisers.”

The Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

What’s the logic to putting in such a tracking system? It lets dispatchers know where officers are in real time rather than having them wait for a response via radio. Unsurprisingly, some cops don’t like the new change.

“No one likes it. Who wants to be followed all over the place?” said one officer who spoke anonymously to the Globe because department rules forbid police from speaking to the media without authorization. “If I take my cruiser and I meet [reluctant witnesses] to talk, eventually they can follow me and say, 'Why were you in a back dark street for 45 minutes?' It’s going to open up a can of worms that can’t be closed.”

Read more at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/boston-police-set-to-track-it...