Peoria County is embracing new innovative methods to reduce crime.
State’s Attorney Jodi Hoos says supplying law enforcement agencies with the top-of-the-line equipment goes a long way in that effort.
“We’re using technology more to our advantage, not just on body cameras and squad car cameras,” she said.
Hoos says one advanced technology coming to the county offers the ability to track stolen vehicles without needing to engage in high-speed pursuits. Sheriff Chris Watkins explains.
“It’s called StarChase (and) it mounts on your squad car. It has two darts; the darts have a gel where it sticks to the car and it’s a GPS unit that’s on there,” said Watkins. “A small little dart, and then it’s a web-based program where anybody on our dispatch, all of our officers can, after we launch that, see where that car is going.”
The sheriff says the GPS technology is a novel remedy when attempting a traffic stop doesn’t work.
“Usually, when we’re behind a stolen car, it probably flees from us 80% of the time, and lot of times it’s a juvenile driving at a high rate of speed, and it’s dangerous for everyone,” said Watkins. “We could launch that (dart) before we even initiate the traffic stop, so if he does leave, flee from us, we can at least recover the victim’s car, but hopefully recover the suspect, too.”
Watkins admits it kind of seems like something you’d see in an action movie.
“I joke about that, too; it’s almost like James Bond,” he said. “In the videos that I’ve seen — I’ve seen a bunch of dash cam with officers using it — it almost doesn’t look real, but it’s very safe. It’s been tested in courts; the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) approves of it, because they’re kind of against pursuits.”
Watkins says the StarChase technology helps address a problem that’s been growing in the Peoria area.
“We’re just seeing a lot of increase in people fleeing police, and our policy – we can’t just pursue everyone going 100-mph down the city road,” said Watkins. “That’s not good either, right? We have to — there’s a lot of factors the weigh in on that.
“So I’m just trying to think outside the box on what technology we could use, because I also don’t like to lose either. I want to get these guys.”
Watkins says he’s been on the look out for a way to cut down on pursuits, and came across the StarChase-mounted GPS launchers about six months ago.
“It’s been on the market for several years, but it’s really starting to, you can tell, gain traction,” he said. “I noticed a couple departments out west that were using them, and then I started doing my homework and found a couple up in the suburbs by Chicago were actually using this technology.”
In doing his research, Watkins learned the Oak Brook Police Department has been using the system to address retail theft as well as stolen vehicles.
“I reached out to them, talked to them about how it was working: ‘Is it effective?’ And they love it; They’re still buying more,” he said.
Without the GPS darts, Watkins says, a deputy or officer is forced to make a rapid assessment of a situation with multiple considerations before initiating a chase.
“Do we know the suspect? What’s the offense? The time and day, the traffic, the speeds. You’ve got to make all those decisions within a split second,” said Watkins. “We don’t have a — some offices and departments have ‘no pursuit at all.’ I don’t agree with that either. I mean, you’re seeing a lot of people reverse those policies, because the bad guys know that and they’re just fleeing every time we try to stop them.”
Watkins says the GPS launchers will help the Greater Peoria Auto Crimes Task Force’s (GPACT) efforts to reverse the region’s increase in car thefts.
“Recovering (a stolen vehicle) is important for the owner and our victims. But also, if we don’t try to make an arrest and catch these kids — and adults — that are doing this, they just keep doing it over and over until they get caught, which then leads into: we do catch them (but) this is not a detainable offense, so they’re out the next day. But we’re not going to give up; we have to keep fighting this.”
Watkins says StarChase’s Guardian VX launchers have proven to be quite effective
“Every once in a while you might miss, if it’s heavy rain or snow or something like that. But from the departments I talked to there, it’s a pretty high success rate,” he said. “They come with a couple darts each. The subscription that we have is unlimited, so even though if we run out those two, we can load them up with two more.”
Watkins says the county is purchasing 10 units with a three-year subscription costing $115,000. He says they’re using some GPACT grant money, and he’s also applying for some retail theft grants funding.
But he says anything that makes the job safer and the public safer is worth the cost.
“We’re using a lot of grant money for this, and some of (the cost) will come out of my budget. But, yeah, we’re going to start with 10 and try it out for three years and see how it goes,” said Watkins. If it goes well, I’m going to keep buying more. I mean, this technology could save lives.”
Watkins says it will take some time before the units are installed and operational.
“It’s a little bit of a process; it’ll be a few months. They’re going to send some people out to install — to train our people, our installers here that install our police equipment. They’re going to train them to install it the right way.
“Then we have to train a trainer, where we actually train our people, too, because before we install them and they’re using it, they have to be trained on this technology, too. So it’ll be a few months, but I’m hoping before the winter we can get this out and going.”
