Cop Cars: From Buck Boards to Buck Rodgers

by

Lieutenant Raymond E. Foster, LAPD (ret.), MPA

Cops are constantly adapting their equipment to the environment. Our kit bags have

grown larger and larger as we collected equipment to deal with the job. Our departments gives

us the basics and as we face new situations we think about what we could have used as a tool to

have made the task easier. Then, we go out and get that tool – for next time. Much of the

commercially produced police equipment used by our peers today was developed “on the fly” by

those who walked the beat before us. The concept of the cruiser as a mobile office was

developed by those of us who worked long shifts and thought “What could be added to this car to

make my job easier? Make me more comfortable? Help me to hunt down dangerous offenders?”

By looking at the historical development of technology used in our mobile office, we can

gain a greater understanding of how to employ the technology, integrate it into our field tactics

and investigations, and look at possible future applications. This series of three articles will look

at the historical development of the mobile office, the current tactical and investigative

advantages of today’s mobile officer and, finally, the future.

Mouse Ears and Bench Seats

My first patrol car was a 1979 Plymouth Fury. There were no rotating lights – just the

two can lights on the roof – solid red to the front and flashing amber to the rear. Of course, they

looked like ears on the black and white rodent – thus the term “mouse ears.” Mounted between

them was the siren which was much louder inside the car than outside. The Plymouth had a

radio with a single base frequency and two tactical frequencies. Mounted on the rear panel

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above the seats was the “cheater box” which allowed you to hear the uplink transmissions from

other cops. Lastly, the microphone weighed enough to be swung like a flat sap.

Once you got out of the car, you were out of contact with the station. Indeed, as an

adaptation between the complete demise of call-boxes and advent of portable radios we carried a

dime in our speed loader, under our ammunition, to make emergency telephone calls. Yes, 9-1-1

was operational, but in a large city the lines were so clogged with calls you were better off using

one thin dime to call the watch commander’s “inside line.”

It wasn’t all bad. The Plymouth was fast and could really move. Unfortunately, during a

freeway chase you simply out ran your own siren. Throughout the 1970s, it was innovations

coming from individual police officers and not organized efforts that improved our mobile

offices. Indeed, President Lyndon Johnson’s crime commission noted in the late 1960s that in

the thirty years since two-way radios were introduced into police vehicles, law enforcement had

not adapted many other technologies. The first adaptations to our mobile office were fairly basic.

For instance, someone cut a length of radiator hose and clamped it to the inside panels of the

front doors providing us with a place to put the baton.

The Age of the Add-on

Beginning in the 1980s, larger agencies began to introduce portable two-way radios and

computer terminals in vehicles. These early Mobile Digital Terminals (MDT) or Mobile “Dumb”

Terminals provided the officer with access, through their agency, to motor vehicle information,

some wanted persons databases, like the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), and local

stolen vehicle information. The first computer terminals were dumb because they were access

ports to the agency’s computer system. Early MDTs were simple gateways to whatever

mainframe computer your agency was using. Unlike your desk top PC, laptop or the computer

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you likely have in your cruiser today, MDTs could not perform simple computing tasks like

word processing or even act as a calculator.

There were tons of challenges to the early MDTs. For instance, through the 1990s,

installation of new electronic equipment was done on an ad-hoc basis. Because new technology

was being added into the police cruiser as an after thought, it was spliced into existing systems.

Splicing could create officer safety problems like, getting your feet caught in wires protruding

from under the dash. Splicing also exacerbated maintenance problems because more

connections meant more failure points and more places to check to locate failure points.

Moreover, previous ad hoc installations tended to over-taxed the vehicle battery. So, you ended

up with wires going everywhere. In today’s mobile office the police vehicle is pre-wired to

accept the technology. By the late 1990s, the installation of computers, radios and high-end

light systems were accomplished by a specially designed wiring harness.

The advent of the wiring harness was a larger leap that you might think. Of course, it

simplified after market installation and maintenance by greatly reducing the number of electrical

connections and thus potential failure points. But, it also greatly enhanced your communications

platform. By having the wires leading from the computer, radio, lights and siren taking defined

paths departments were able to reduce signal interference. Think about driving along in your

personal car and listening to your AM radio. If you pass underneath electrical transmission lines

you often hear interference. Before the use of wiring harnesses and specially adapted cables,

power for lights and sirens were often run along side cables, cords and wires used for your radio.

You got interference.

This type of serious adaptation of electronic equipment to the police service is generally

referred to as ruggedization. Simply put, ruggedization is the designing and installing of

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equipment that can withstand the rigors of police work. At first blush, some police officers think

that it would be relatively simple to just install a laptop into their vehicle. There are a lot of

technical concerns, including ruggedizing the equipment to survive you and the job.

Of course, wiring the vehicle isn’t the only practical problem. Early police vehicles had

bench seats. So, terminals were mounted on a pole in front of the dashboard, between the

passenger and driver. In order for the driver or the passenger to access the terminal it was

mounted on a swivel. At first, a resistance ring was used so that the terminal did not swing

freely. Consider that most police cruisers are run like “hot bunks” on a ship. That is, once

you’re done with it, the next person moves in, leaving little time for the bunk, or the car, to cool

off. Police work is 24/7 and, except for maintenance periods, cop cars are often handed off from

shift to shift. Constant use weakened the swivel resistance mechanism so that it wasn’t long

before the terminal swung with the motion of the car, occasionally striking your knees.

Police equipment is exposed to extreme temperature variations and constant use. For

these and the wiring issues, you just can’t slap your laptop into your vehicle. Today’s

technology has been improved and adapted so that is highly usable in the field. The ad-hoc

period of police mobile computing wasn’t all bad - it brought about many of the innovations you

use today – real computing power in the vehicle, technology adapted to your environment, and

improved maintenance.

From Free Form to Icons

Almost everyone uses icon-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) software. This is the

“point and click” or touch screen technology. An icon (a symbol on your computer screen)

represents a task you want your computer to perform. Today, you click or touch and an NCIC or

motor vehicle input screen appears. It wasn’t always so. Early terminals used a Disc Operating

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System (DOS) like software system. In early MDTs, the screen was blank. You typed the

command string (to run someone for warrants it might look like this -

“@Nsmith,john@D010160@h509@w165@hblk@eblu@rw@sm.” After typing the command

string, you hit enter. Of course, one wrong field identifier or a bit of mis-typing on your part and

you either received an error message or perhaps did not properly check the system. In contrast,

today if you want to run a license plate you like click an icon or push a button the keyboard, or if

you’re really luck touch the screen and the proper format appears. The progress from a DOS

like environment to a GUI environment was a major step forward for law enforcement. The GUI

environment undoubtedly increased the amount and accuracy of use of our mobile office data

systems.

Tactical Applications Today and in the Future

There are many aspects of technology that have improved police work. Perhaps more

importantly, there are some aspects of technology that tempt us to violate basic officer safety

field tactics. Now that we have a little understanding in how the historical development of

mobile computing technology in policing developed the idea of adaptation to the environment, or

ruggedization, we can look at integrating field tactics and investigations in our next article.