Police Driving Can Be Better Monitored, Improved

St. Pete Police Officer Mehnedin Karic, fired over a traffic accident that killed a person in a wheelchair, was reinstated in his job by a magistrate after a long legal  process.

The arbitrator stated the firing was "disparate, excessive and not progressive." You can read the details in Kameed Stanley's Tampa Bay Times article, St.Pete officer who was fired gets his job back.

Officer Timothy Reys was suspended for 5 days May 8, 2013, for driving over 100 mph and crashing his cruiser in March. You can read Meredith Rutland's Tampa Bay Times article, St.Petersburg officer suspended for crashing his patrol car.

Complaints about St. Petersburg Patrol officers’ driving practices are fairly common and usually involve speeding.

One of my jobs as PD IT Manager was to verify driving details when complaints were filed, or accidents happened using the department's GPS tracking system.

Every patrol car has a GPS unit that is on at all times, or should be, and tracks the vehicle’s speed, location and direction.

Every minute a patrol car is in motion, the system creates a record of its location, time, speed and direction. The information is stored in a department computer.

This information is available for all officers and could easily be assembled into daily driving reports to create officer driving profiles with performance evaluated by first-line supervisors and preventative measures taken to improve driving skills.

The "progressive" part of the arbitrator's decision could easily be addressed if this data were used to identify officers who routinely speed and provide coaching, training and progressive discipline.

At the time I retired in 2011, access to this information was restricted to me and one of my top level supervisors; anyone else asking for access to GPS data  had to have approval, usually from the  Internal Affairs Unit, so there was very little use of the data for management, supervision or officer training purposes.

The arbitrator, Mark Scarr, said that Chief Harmon's actions in firing Officer Karic were an "abuse of authority."

Interestingly, access to the GPS data was restricted by a direct order from Chief Harmon.

It is possible that with some policy changes and better use of the information available future accidents could be prevented and officer discipline can be more appropriately applied.

e-mail Doc at: dr.webb@verizon.net, or send me a Facebook Friend request.