NYPD cops will soon get $160 million worth of high-tech electronic gear that will let them scan and process fingerprints in the field to confirm the identity of suspects and find out if they’re wanted on outstanding warrants, officials announced Thursday.
“You can literally, with this technology, take a fingerprint on a street corner in New York City,” Mayor de Blasio said.
“This is going to speed the work of law enforcement. It’s also going to allow us to not have to bring as many people into the station house.”
“It’s going to allow us to do more summonses and fewer arrests where appropriate. It’s going to simplify and make more efficient the work that people in law enforcement do,” he added.
NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said the mobile fingerprinting technology “will take some time” to roll out, but Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance said that “by this spring, we anticipate the integration of fingerprint scanning, as well as enhanced data collection in the field.”
Officials said the technology would come courtesy of 35,000 handheld devices and another 6,000 Panasonic “Toughpad” tablet computers that the city is buying for the NYPD.
The electronics will be paid for with settlements from crooked banks, including France’s BNP Paribas, which earlier this year coughed up nearly $9 billion for violating US sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan.
The mayor bragged that the new equipment “changes the game” of law enforcement in the Big Apple.
“They can search federal and state and local databases for information, right as they’re doing their job they can get that information with their fingertips,” said de Blasio, who called the electronics “something unimaginable a few years ago.”
Bratton described the new gear as “gifts” that signal “Christmas has come early” for his department.
“I’ve been dreaming about this for a long time,” Bratton added.
“The NYPD once again will be changing the face of American policing.”
Currently, cops in the field can only access the NYPD’s internal computer network though laptops that are locked inside their vehicles which sources say are prone to time-consuming failures.
“The problem now is the computers don’t work. You lose a signal, you get logged out, you’ve got to re-boot it,” one source said.
Sources said the smartphone model hasn’t yet been selected, but will likely use Microsoft software so the devices are compatible with existing NYPD computers.
Sources also said the smartphones and tablets will be connected to Verizon’s high-speed wireless network, widely considered the most reliable in the city.
As part of the plan, the every NYPD employee will also get an official email account.
“So I will, sometime next year, be able to instantly reach all 50,000 members of the NYPD in a moment on email,” Bratton said.
The new devices will be able to access the Web, but Bratton said the NYPD already has protocols in place to monitor Internet usage in its precinct houses, and that “many of those will apply to the devices out in the field.”
He said the NYPD will be able to record “every touch of any of these devices” and “track what the device is being used for so they’re not being abused.”
Additional reporting by Shawn Cohen