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- NEW YORK (APBNews.com)
-- After failing for 19 hours to flush an armed man high on methamphetamine
from a Los Angeles warehouse, sheriff's deputies made the decision they
always dread -- bust in and take him out.
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- They had no idea where in the cavernous facility Daniel
Lawrence Collins had holed up, and no way to find out. They knew he would
have the drop on the strike team, and they were right. Collins opened fire
with an SKS assault rifle from behind a bathroom door, injuring three deputies.
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- What the deputies need -- and what they soon may get
-- is X-ray vision.
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- 'A force multiplier'
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- Three high-tech labs are in the final stages of developing
a new form of radar device that can see through walls by broadcasting radio
signals across broad bands of the spectrum to pinpoint a hidden suspect.
Based on military technology, the products still need government approval
and won't go on the market for at least a few more months.
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- "One of the exciting things about this is that it's
kind of like a force multiplier," said Elise Taylor, a spokeswoman
for Time Domain, an Alabama company that developed a through-the-wall surveillance
system called RadarVision. "It allows you to tell what's going on
inside a building without actually having to look through a window or be
inside the room."
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- See breathing through wood
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- Time Domain's product can detect breathing through wood,
plaster or concrete from 20 feet away. By reading an LCD panel on the front
of the chunky, 16-pound unit, police officers will know the exact location
of their quarry.
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- Prototype of RadarVision "Especially with something
that is as efficient as this in detecting motion behind a door or wall,
the police definitely need something like that," said Jim Ball, a
program manager for the National Institute of Justice's Office of Law Enforcement
Technology Commercialization who is helping Time Domain bring the product
to market. "It's high priority."
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- Time Domain has developed 20 prototypes and is still
working on reducing the size of the unit, Ball said.
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- 100-foot range
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- Time Domain isn't the only company working on X-ray vision
for cops. After that June 11, 1997, standoff, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's
Office started looking into the new technology and came across defense
contractor Raytheon and its MARS system, or Motion and Ranging Sensor.
The company promises MARS will spot a lurking fugitive 100 feet away. That
kind of range -- achieved by adapting military missile guidance technology
-- is enough to find someone hiding two stories up inside a building.
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- "If they're in the bushes, all they have to do is
scratch their butt and you'll pick them up," said Larry Frazier, a
Raytheon senior scientist who developed the MARS system.
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- SWAT teams from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department
and Albuquerque, N.M., Police Department have been working with demonstration
models of the MARS system.
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- "This particular technology allows us to see through
walls and has great promise because we can find where the suspect is and
enter into an area where we're not going to be confronted by him,"
said Lt. Sid Heal, who researches new technology for the Los Angeles Sheriff's
Department. "Sometimes it's as important to know where a suspect isn't
as where he is."
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- Radar flashlight
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- Raytheon's Motion and Ranging Sensor system Scientists
at Georgia Tech are working on a third system -- a lightweight through-the-wall
radar system that fits inside a flashlight. With a range of about 40 feet,
Georgia Tech's "radar flashlight" displays less information than
the other two devices. Initially developed so Army medics could tell if
soldiers stranded on a battlefield were still breathing, the radar flashlight
can detect, from certain angles, a human heartbeat, say its inventors.
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- When the radar flashlight detects a human movement, the
display is simple -- as simple, perhaps, as two lights on top of the unit.
A red light means there's someone there.
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- This simplicity has the advantage of being cheaper than
the other systems. The MARS units are expected to cost $5,000 to $10,000.
Time Domain doesn't disclose the cost of its device. At $500, the radar
flashlight may be more practical for cash-strapped police departments.
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- "We're trying to reach every policeman on the beat,"
said Gene Greneker, the scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute
who developed the radar flashlight. "Police departments don't have
a lot of money for technology."
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- Federal approval required
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- Cost might not be the only thing keeping these technologies
off the market. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates
all commercial radar, radio and television broadcasts, is holding up the
technology because of concerns that the devices may interfere with existing
radar transmissions.
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- Conventional radar bounces continuous waves of energy,
at a fixed frequency, at a target. The Raytheon and Time Domain devices
use something called ultra wide-band radar, sending out low-level bursts
of energy across many frequencies. Because they carry such little power,
the companies say the bursts cause minimal interference to other signals,
but the FCC has yet to approve ultra wide-band transmissions.
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- Time Domain, Raytheon and other companies with a stake
in this technology said they expected the FCC to make a decision by this
summer. Time Domain said it would like to begin selling units this year.
Time Domain founder Ralph Petroff told APBNews.com that he expected the
federal government to grant his company a waiver soon that would allow
it to distribute 2,500 of its devices to accredited public safety agencies.
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- Raytheon wants to have its products on the market by
the beginning of next year.
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- The demand for these products is high, and the National
Institute of Justice has placed through-the-wall surveillance at the top
of its scientific funding priority list for the past two years. Law enforcement
officials and the companies themselves say the need for the new products
is obvious, and they may help police officers survive deadly situations.
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- "I think once they learn how to use it, it'll be
as valuable as their guns," Frazier said.
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