The Lima Police Department is getting a new piece of technology to help them not only solve crimes but help prevent them too.
The department was awarded a grant from the State of Ohio's Violent Crime Reduction Grant Program to purchase a Mobile Scout from Infinite Protection. Police officials say Lima has had its issues with gun violence, either with people being shot or reports of random gunfire. The Mobile Scout is a crime detection and prevention device with various technology that can be moved to different parts of the city, to give officers real-time data for a variety of issues and crimes.
“It’s solar-powered, it has a GPS tracking system in case anyone tries to tamper with it,” says Major Ron Holman. “It can detect gunshots, it can detect smoke and fire, it also has a camera in it with facial recognition technology and license plate reader so if we have an incident where shots are fired in the vicinity where this will pick it up, it will immediately take pictures of the surrounding area and really help with our investigations.”
A handful of other agencies around Ohio are using the mobile scout to help target a specific problem and prevent crime from happening.
“So we've had a lot of good luck with a lot of agencies, fire departments, schools, just some commercial and industrial sectors that need a solution for things happening on the job. We have a lot of different avenues through that. We've been able to really mitigate a lot of problems these agencies have had and hopefully make it easier on them, require a lot less budget to make things safe either as a work environment or a city,” adds Dustin Kabara, PR Dir. for Infinite Protection.
The customized Mobile Scout that the Lima Police Department ordered will be coming in the next few months and will be deployed shortly after.
