GPS In Squad Cars To Help With Faster Response

By: Darcy Pohland, WCCO, Minneapolis

In an emergency, we trust that police, fire or ambulance workers will respond quickly.

Now, Minneapolis is on the verge of making that happen even faster.

"For a high priority life and death situation, saving a few seconds can make a big difference," said Minneapolis Police Lt. Jeff Rugel.

That's why every squad car, fire truck, and ambulance in Minneapolis is getting a state of the art GPS tracking system installed.

Squads and other emergency personnel will be able to see exactly where their back up is and dispatchers can get them to critical situations quicker.

"It will allow the dispatchers to know at any given time where police, fire and ambulance rigs are," said John Dejung, the Minneapolis Emergency Communications director. "We'll know much more precisely where everybody is so we can get the closest, quickest responder to the scene."

When these systems were first introduced in other cities some police unions and officers opposed them. They worried about increased monitoring by supervisors.

"We've gotten no push back from the union. We heard some grumbling initially from some of the street officers," said Rugel. "We're busy enough that we don't have the time, or the desire, to monitor people for the sake of monitoring people."

"In those situations where we've got truely time critical things going on, we'll get people there quicker than ever before," said Dejung.

This program should be up and running in March.

Minneapolis police also hope to eventually hook it up to another system that tracks gunshots -- called shot spotter.