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Abstract: 

In August 2002, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office located in central Florida became the first law enforcement agency in the nation to launch an innovative and ingenuous GIS/GPS (Geo Information System/ Global Positioning Satellite) system that enhances public safety by fighting crime. In Florida, felony supervision is handled by the State of Florida Department of Corrections and law enforcement is provided by county sheriff’s offices and local police departments. The Florida Department of Corrections and several local law enforcement agencies formed a partnership to create a program that allows them to combine the GPS tracking of offenders with GIS crime incident data, thereby placing tracked offenders at or near the scenes of crimes. Pro Tech Monitoring, Inc. in Florida and Veridian, now owned by General Dynamics participated in the project: Pro Tech provides GPS tracking equipment to agencies in Florida and General Dynamics developed the software system (Veritracks) that analyses the data and detects the “hits.” These “hits” are automatically provided to the local law enforcement agency that reported the crime. Law enforcement then investigates the validity of the “hit” in order to determine whether or not they have a potential suspect or witness. If the investigation results in an arrest (or warrant for an arrest) the Probation Officer is notified by law enforcement and the offender is also charged with violating the terms of their release and/or probation. This article discusses the program and its results.

Keywords: EMPACT

Affiliations:  1: Seminole County Sheriff’s Office.