Dubai: It scans up to 20 car plate numbers within a minute — or one every three seconds — even in pitch darkness as it whizzes at high speed, quickly alerting an officer if any of them features on a blacklist of wanted cars.
Meet Motorola's latest souped-up patrol car, a BMW 5 Series fitted with the latest gear — dubbed the leading edge of policing. With voice-activated controls and high-definition live-streaming video cameras, among other features, they will make communities safer.
The vehicle is on display at the four-day Tetra World Congress 2012 in Dubai, where experts are discussing developments in terrestrial radio communications.
And Dubai Police in a complete retrofit, will soon have something similar to beef up its patrol fleet. "We need more of these resources because Dubai communities are getting bigger and busier," said Col Dr Khalid Ali Ghanim Al Marri, Communications Director at Dubai Police.
"A video camera is a silent but powerful witness," said Olatunde Williams, Motorola's Europe Middle East and Africa Operations Manager. Thanks to developments in digital signal processing based on LTE (long-term evolution), Williams said they are able to stream video images at speeds up to 10 Mbps — many times faster than the existing "Teds" trunked radio system or 3G networks.
Col Al Marri said Dubai police is set to migrate to LTE platform soon. "Tetra (terrestrial trunked radio) will always stay (as) voice communication is not available over LTE just yet. But we will move from 3G to LTE for broadband use," said Col Al Marri without giving a timeframe.
High-definition mobile video is the next big thing in securing communities. Using add-on devices, moving images of a live incident are beamed to a command and control centre and senior officers can view them in real-time using Android phones or iPhones.
Al Marri said that 100 more police cars and 30 motorcycle patrols will soon join their fleet of 250 vehicles fitted with video-streaming cameras.
According to him, 90 per cent of their patrols respond within 15 minutes of an incident report.
