App 'Waze'

[bravo14]

I notice police departments are disabling their calls for service on their sites. Due to a App called "Waze"

Sheriffs Want Popular Police-Tracking App Disabled | NBC4 Washington

Law Enforcement Wants Police-Tracking App Waze Disabled - US News

 

[tampabaynews]

Where did you read/hear that agencies are disabling online active calls due to Waze? Not sure what the point would be since the agency is putting the information out on the web anyway.

It's not an officer safety issue in my opinion. One can argue that being alerted of law enforcement presence would make you more mindful of your speed and give you advanced warning to move over a lane.

I have a strong feeling this app is despised by traffic enforcement units especially because it makes revenue collection a little more difficult. But of course they're not going to come out and say it so they play the "officer safety" card.

Our state highway patrol got dinged recently in the courts after ticketing people for flashing their high beams to warn other drivers. Radar detectors are legal in my state but the troopers will ticket for having it mounted on your windshield.

The way I see it, if you can restrict Waze from reporting law enforcement then why not stop people from posting speed trap locations on Twitter or Facebook as well? You can't. The First Amendment will be a likely argument should litigation occur.

I would be surprised if anything becomes of this.

 

[bravo14]

Where did you read/hear that agencies are disabling online active calls due to Waze? Not sure what the point would be since the agency is putting the information out on the web anyway.

It's not an officer safety issue in my opinion. One can argue that being alerted of law enforcement presence would make you more mindful of your speed and give you advanced warning to move over a lane.

I have a strong feeling this app is despised by traffic enforcement units especially because it makes revenue collection a little more difficult. But of course they're not going to come out and say it so they play the "officer safety" card.

Our state highway patrol got dinged recently in the courts after ticketing people for flashing their high beams to warn other drivers. Radar detectors are legal in my state but the troopers will ticket for having it mounted on your windshield.

The way I see it, if you can restrict Waze from reporting law enforcement then why not stop people from posting speed trap locations on Twitter or Facebook as well? You can't. The First Amendment will be a likely argument should litigation occur.

I would be surprised if anything becomes of this.

Jacksonville Sheriff's Office has disabled their Online Call Service
Police concerns over navigation app 'Waze'

 

[eaf1956]

OMG maybe they shouldn't mark their car cause people might know they are police and they would be unsafe! IF someone wanted to harm an officer and know where they are all they have to do is call in a shots fired call to a location and the cops will show up.

 

[mitbr]

I have said it before on these forums for profit policing is getting a foot hold in the USA as we slowly move towards a police state.The officers that I know are even afraid of this...10 million or more on new radio systems every few years,being told by there sergeants don't pursue a suspect fleeing in there car for fear of liability, don't patrol your district but rather stop and give out speeding tickets.

Think of how many more officers they could put on the streets for 10 million dollars or for heavens sake give the officers a raise they deserve it .

 

[kma371]

I notice police departments are disabling their calls for service on their sites. Due to a App called "Waze"

Sheriffs Want Popular Police-Tracking App Disabled | NBC4 Washington

Law Enforcement Wants Police-Tracking App Waze Disabled - US News

You miss read the article. They are not disabling the calls for service page because of the app, they are disabling it because it does the same thing as the app does, identify where officers are located.

"Buejda says JSO has also disabled their Calls for Service Page over those same concerns. That website showed where police officers were responding across the city".

 

[marcotor]

LAPD Concerned about Waze

L.A. police chief goes public with concerns over Google Waze app - LA Times

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck is concerned that Waze will be used to track movements of a particular car or cars in order to target officers. I can appreciate his concern, but think he just needs to be educated on how and what Waze exactly does. Thankfully, LAPD has reached out to Google to "open a dialogue", and I think once it's all said and done, their understanding will be greatly enhanced.

There are many LE supporters of Waze, as it tends to reduce average speeds. I wouldn't put it past someone posting false reports of LE activity to slow traffic to a moderate speed.

Spend a lot of time daily on the freeways going from call to call, and during daylight if you get to 65, be happy! But I can attest to the idiocy of my SoCal brethren, with traffic moving along at 80, then suddenly standing on the brakes and slowing to 60 when a CHP officer is OUT OF HIS CAR on the shoulder.

 

[rapidcharger]

This has absolutely nothing to do with officer safety and absolutely EVERYTHING to do with making money.
They know full well that Waze is or has the potential to cut down on how many tickets they write, thus they don't want it.
In a recent road trip, I got to see first hand, just how effective and useful that feature is for avoiding speeding tickets.
It's the same reason they don't want radar detectors and managed to ban those in some places.

I mean, just look- Jacksonville S.O.? That says it all right there. Writing tickets is such a big part of what they do there, Waze is really eating into their bottom line. They want to put an end to that. Officer safety my behind. That's the catch-all excuse for everything nowadays. That's their excuse for encryption too. Surely they can't be that cowardly.

What happened to wanting to be visible so that people don't crash into them? What happened to pulling over a lane so they aren't frightened by oncoming cars or the gush of wind that follows? If more people know where they are in advance, they can slow down and pull over a lane. Isn't that the point of thousands of dollars of flashing lights in every crack and crevice on the police car? For visibility?

 

[rapidcharger]

I wouldn't put it past someone posting false reports of LE activity to slow traffic to a moderate speed. )))

That crossed my mind too, however a few things..
If the cop isn't really there, other wazers indicate that and it raises a flag of being too many bogus reports, they will get banned. And they have to use their real ID to sign up in the first place.

(((Spend a lot of time daily on the freeways going from call to call, and during daylight if you get to 65, be happy! But I can attest to the idiocy of my SoCal brethren, with traffic moving along at 80, then suddenly standing on the brakes and slowing to 60 when a CHP officer is OUT OF HIS CAR on the shoulder.

Yeah but it's not just speeding on the fwy, it's also traffic offenses on the surface streets too. But good point, what happened to wanting everyone to slow down and move over a lane. If there were some advance warning of that, we can do that. But nah, they'd rather write a $600 ticket (in my state) for that.

 

[Jay911]

I'm a Waze beta user and Level 5 (out of 6) editor. The caterwauling about Waze letting people track police officers is a container ship-load of false information and hysteria.

Waze is an app that crowdsources the concept of navigation through traffic. App users have the ability to report various things from weather conditions to crashes to traffic jams, and other users will see those reports. If used as a navigation aid, Waze will attempt to route around the types of reports which cause traffic slowdowns.

One of the "hazards" that users can report is police presence on a road. What they can report is just that - the presence of police. The only option is "visible" or "hidden", indicating whether the police presence is overt or not ("hidden" being "hiding behind the billboard" type thing). This does not identify a specific unit, officer, or agency, and does not move with the unit if the unit leaves the area. The report stays active on the Waze map for a period of time (Waze's authors haven't divulged their algorithms in depth). Eventually the report will disappear on its own - but users can prolong or shorten the lifetime of the report, optionally, by either giving the report a "thanks" when it pops up on their screen, or by responding with "not there" (both of those are buttons on the report).

In either the Waze subreddit or the Waze forums - I forget which - the concept of a police officer sitting in Waze and tapping "not there" every time a police report shows up was discussed. The response was that it would just give the report points toward being shortened (i.e. displayed for less overall time), it wouldn't eradicate the report from the screen entirely. And it was also hinted at that if a specific Waze user does nothing but submit "not theres" continuously, Waze may (or may not) have tools in place to automatically recognize this and prevent the user from tainting the data (i.e. ban him).

Various police officers have spoken up when this news item came up in the Waze forums and/or on Reddit. The majority don't mind Waze reporting police presence, because it does the same thing they're trying to do by being on the road - slow people down. It's only the Buford T. Justices of the world that hide in the bushes with a radar gun catching people doing 53 where the speed limit drops from 55 to 35 that are complaining about this.

 

[rapidcharger]

It's only the Buford T. Justices of the world that hide in the bushes with a radar gun catching people doing 53 where the speed limit drops from 55 to 35 that are complaining about this.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of them. Especially down in Florida. Big source of revenue.
But as I observed in my recent trip down to that state, Waze accurately alerted me to the police but they had no trouble finding plenty of people who weren't using Waze to capture.