Cities, Space, and the New World of Urban Law Enforcement Technologies

Abstract

Advanced technologies developed for use within military and defense applications are becoming commonplace within urban police departments. Technologies like photonics, thermal imaging, facial and behavioral recognition systems, remote monitoring by satellite, DNA testing, and retinal scans have found their place among the traditional crime-fighting weapons in police agencies. These technologies are being diffused among cities, aided by organizations like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, NASA, the US military, national research laboratories, the Office of Law Enforcement Technology Commercialization of the National Institute of Justice, and others. Biometric, imaging, and monitoring technologies can be examined as stationary and roving surveillors, extra-local surveillors, and are often originated and controlled outside the metropolitan area in which they are applied. With this diffusion, the treatment and partitioning of urban space and urban citizens by public police agencies are changing substantially. Police technologies and personnel are creating machine systems that code and decode the information embedded in urban spaces, uncover patterns of movement by selected individuals, and locate and identify the invisible physical remnants left by targets of these surveillance machines.