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News Article - Columbus Dispatch February 12, 1998  REPRINTED, WITH PERMISSION, FROM THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH COPTER COMPUTER ZEROES IN ON CRIME MAP SYSTEM HELPS PINPOINT ADDRESSES Date: Thursday, February 12, 1998 Section: NEWS Page: 01D Illustration: Photo Byline: By Kevin Mayhood Dispatch County Offices Reporter Under the noonday sun or over endless strings of amber streetlights, a Columbus police helicopter can sweep over the city at nearly 150 mph and home in on crime. A new computer system, which uses Franklin County's Geographic Information Systems map to pinpoint houses and buildings, tells the flying patrol exactly where it's going. ''It used to be we'd respond to a burglary call and be told it's on a certain street between these two streets,'' said Sgt. Gary Mathias. ''You'd circle, watching seven or eight houses; the guy goes out of the house on the far side and you'd miss him. ''This puts us right on top of the house.'' The prototype, used now for three weeks, works most of the time. During a two-hour shift Tuesday night, Officers Matt Montoney and Gregg Wolfram answered 12 calls. The computer showed the way to seven. While Wolfram flew, Montoney, seated next to him, punched in a South Side address where an officer asked for assistance. On a Franklin County map display, the computer flashed a star on the address and a spot on the helicopter's location. The distance to the site, compass heading and speed were listed. As the helicopter neared, the map zoomed to show only the South Side and then zeroed in on the street and showed the image of a commercial building. In the parking lot, an officer was arresting an unruly driver. When the helicopter switched on its spotlight, the driver calmed and quietly got into the back seat of the cruiser below. Responding to a car chase, the helicopter flew from Downtown and spun over a South Side neighborhood. The spotlight intercepted two men walking from a car, which they had abandoned, to the address of the vehicle's owner, a few blocks away. Arrests were made at the house. During the shift, the helicopter beat cruisers to eight calls, arriving anywhere from a few seconds to nearly 10 minutes ahead of officers on the ground. Most calls were burglary alarms. The officers circled, checking for open or broken windows and doors and holes in the roofs. When patrol officers arrived below, the helicopter crew radioed what they saw and warned whether people were moving inside. Mathias got the idea for the locator system when he read about Franklin County Auditor Joe Testa's GIS map - a real estate map that shows buildings, landmarks and much more - in the newspaper two years ago. At a trade show, he met Don C. Morgan, a computer programmer from the Lexington, Ky., office of MetaMAP. Morgan began working with the police last summer and wrote the software that makes the map useful. So far, the $7,000 system is credited with putting the helicopter at a house where an estranged husband was kidnapping a son. The helicopter arrived to see a car pulling away from the house, followed it and directed cruisers to intercept the car. Police have one of the computers, but they hope to add four more and have them mounted in each of the division's helicopters. As they find addresses not in the system, police will alert Testa's office, which will add them. Photo Caption: Eric Albrecht. Columbus Police Officer Joe Cartmille uses a mapping system to get an exact location of a possible crime scene. All content herein is © 1998 The Columbus Dispatch and may not be republished without permission. |
