Police Technology in the USA

Requests for police services are generally transmitted to headquarters by telephone and then by radio to officers in the field. Police have long operated on the theory that fast response time results in more arrests and less risk or injury to victims. The current trend is toward handling calls by priority, with emergency response reserved for cases involving an injured party or those in which a reasonable chance exists to prevent a crime or make an arrest at the scene. Modern computer-assisted dispatching systems permit automatic selection of the nearest officer in service. In some cities, officers can receive messages displayed on computer terminals in their cars, without voice communication from headquarters. An officer, for example, can key in the license number of a suspect car and receive an immediate response from the computer as to the status of the car and the owner's identity

An increasing number of agencies are now using computers to link crime patterns with certain suspects. Fingerprints found at crime scenes can be electronically compared with fingerprint files.

In recent years technological advances have been made in such areas as voice identification, use of the scanning electron microscope, and blood testing which is an important tool because only 2 persons in 70, 000 have identical blood characteristics. Some of the new laboratory techniques, although highly effective, are extremely expensive, so their use is limited to the most challenging cases.

TASK 5, Answer the following questions:

1, What are the current trends in police work in the USA?

2, What cases are handled by priority under the new approach?

Chapter III. Law Enforcement

3. How do computers assist in police work?

4. What technological advances have been made in law-and-order campaign?

5. Why is blood testing an important tool in crime detection?

TASK 6. Find in the text above the English equivalents for the following words and expressions:

1. пострадавшая сторона

2. предотвратить преступление

3. осуществить арест на месте преступления

4. отпечатки пальцев

5. быстрое реагирование

6. печатать, вводить с клавиатуры

7. технический прогресс

TASK 7, Render the following text into English paying special attention to the ivords and expressions given in bold type:

Большое число расследований уголовных преступлений, ведущихся американскими прадоохранительными органами, вынудило ФБР приступить к созданию новой криминалисти­ческой лаборатории. Лаборатория будет оснащена новейшим оборудованием для баллистической, химической, судебно-ме­дицинской и других видов экспертизы, необходимых для рас­следования различных преступлений,

Лаборатория ФБР, которая находится в Вашингтоне, на протяжении многих лет остается крупнейшей и лучшей в стране. Однако в последнее время она не справляется с огром­ным потоком заданий, поступающих не только от головного ве­домства, но и из других правоохранительных органов.

Необходимость создания новой лаборатории продиктована также тем, что ФБР все чаще приходится заниматься рассле­дованием сложнейших дел, связанных с международным тер­роризмом, организованной преступностью и контрабандой нар­котиков.

Руководство ФБР планирует создание единой компьютер­ной базы данных всех правоохранительных органов США, ко­торая будет содержать информацию о преступниках и их со­общниках и вещественных доказательствах, собранных в ходе расследований.

Just English- Английский для юристов

It's Interesting to Know Alphonse Bertillion

The problem of identifying criminals was made much easier by Bertillion, who, in 1882, invented a system called anthropometry. As head of the identification department of the Paris police he had careful measurements made of the head, limbs and body of every criminal he could lay his hands on, who could then not get away in the future by giving a false name. Photography was £ lso used for the first time. Many hundreds of criminals were caught in the first years of the system's operation, but it was soon replaced by fingerprinting. To Bertillion, though, must go the credit for creating the science of human identification.

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