Police departments in South Carolina and Massachusetts are testing a radio frequency identification system to manage badge inventory and department security better. Both are testing the SmartShield system, which consists of officer badges with embedded RFID chips and a records management software application known as Enforcement Identification (Eid).
Developed and marketed by V.H. Blackinton & Co., SmartShield can be used to track badges as they leave a storage area for assignment to officers. RFID interrogators (readers) are not included in the package, but by the time the system becomes commercially available in August, they might be, according V.H. Blackinton’s John Domurad, director of research and development. “They’re in development,” he says.
Captain Doug Connelly of the South Carolina Highway Patrol (SCDPS) says he first approached Blackinton about five years ago for a better inventory control solution to identify missing badges. “We had had several incidents where badges were stolen or lost and eventually turned up in other states,” he says.
What the department needed was a way to track a badge as it was assigned to an officer, and to link that badge to that particular officer. Historically, each badge comes with an ID number embossed right on the badge, and most departments link that number with the officer on paper and in their internal records. This can be a difficult task, especially since many officers carry up to four different badges. If a badge turns up in another state, for example, it can be a difficult for departments to follow its paper trail to determine whose badge it is.
Each SmartShield badge is embedded with a passive 13.56 MGH RFID tag, which complies with the ISO-14443 standard and is encoded with a unique ID number. The South Carolina Highway Patrol badges initially used the Eid software to enter badges into the department’s personnel attendance-tracking and access-control administration software system, created by Galaxy Technologies. The Eid software acts as a bridge between the badge and a department’s SQL-based record management system, such as the one from Galaxy, and can run in conjunction with any ISO 14443-compliant access-control systems.
The agency is using Datastrip‘s DSVII-SC handheld interrogators, running Windows CE.Net. The DSVII-SC, installed at entry points at the headquarters in Charleston, reads bar codes, magnetic strips and RFID chips. The DSVII-SC communicates wirelessly with the police department’s database. However, any ISO 14443-compliant RFID interrogator can be used with the SmartShield system.When an officer is assigned a badge, an interrogator reads the tag (the read range is 2 to 3 inches), after which the staff inputs into the department’s database any necessary data to be associated with that badge, such as the officer’s name.
After the SCDPS began using SmartShield, it also installed a security system at their Charleston headquarters that locks all doors to the building unless proper identification is provided. Connelly says the department has incorporated SmartShield into that security system by fitting the doorways with a variety of RFID readers that can read ISO 14443-compliant RFID tags. An officer must present the badge to the reader. If it recognizes the tag’s serial number, the officer is granted automatic entry to the building (that is, the door unlocks). If a badge is stolen or missing, the department can disable it by removing its access authorization in the department’s database.
According to Domurad, the system is intended for inventory control of new badges, and to track which badges are assigned to which officers, but it can also be used to complement an access control program already in use, or even as the sole access control source, if the end user so chooses. Domurad foresees a multitude of other applications in the future, including scenarios involving RFID readers on motorists’ vehicles that would read a trooper’s RFID badge during a traffic stop, authenticating the information on that badge.
Connelly expects to use it for other applications as well. “We can use a portable reader at special events—such as a concert or a ballgame—set up at the door, saving a lot of time in taking role [determining which officers had arrived]…and they would know immediately if an officer were missing.” He adds that an emergency, such as a terrorist act, could require fast accounting of officers, and portable RFID readers would allow the department to know where its troops were deployed in a hurry. Connelly says airports would be another good location for readers to track police officers reporting for duty. If the South Carolina Highway Patrol adopts the SmartShield system this fall, Connelly says, it would be used for all 800 of its highway troopers, as well as possibly the other 200 officers who provide protective services.
The Brookline Police Department, in Massachusetts, with about 140 officers, will be testing the SmartShield system until late May. The department is using the SmartShield system for badge inventory purposes, as well as access control, says Scott Wilder, the force’s director of technology. “It helps us enormously in tracking our badges,” he says. Like Connelly, however, Wilder has his eyes set on future applications of this system. In particular, he would like to use SmartShield with desktop and laptop computers, requiring an officer to present the SmartShield to a reader before being able to use a computer. He also sees the SmartShield in use at crime scenes to record which officers arrive at a crime scene, when they get there and how long they stay.