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By Greg Bartlett

Drug smuggling is a serious problem for the United States. Each year over a million pounds of marijuana and thousands of pounds of heroin and cocaine are seized by border patrol agents in attempted smuggling operations. Millions more pounds of illegal drugs make it through undetected. Police investigations are difficult since following suspects requires significant manpower, long hours, and large investments in fuel and payroll. One way departments can increase effectiveness while simultaneously decreasing cost is to use a GPS tracking device attached to a suspect’s car as part of their investigation.

A GPS tracking device will transmit a signal to a remote receiver, recording the location of the suspect’s vehicle at any given point in time. Police can view information such as speed, direction of travel, stops made and duration of each stop as well as current location of the vehicle. In this way, they can check suspicious activity and verify whether a suspect has traveled across state lines, gone out of the country, or made contact with a known drug trafficker.

Rising fuel costs and inflation have put a squeeze on many businesses and police departments are no exception. Utilizing a GPS tracking device is like having an officer visually tail a suspect without the associated expense of overtime pay and fuel for the officer’s vehicle as well as freeing up that officer to meet more pressing needs. Although concern has been expressed in some quarters that using GPS tracking to monitor criminal movements is an invasion of privacy, a recent court ruling found that this is not the case. Placing a GPS device on a suspect’s car is no different than having an officer follow that suspect since the GPS can record only the location of the vehicle, information that would be observable in the public sphere.

As drug trafficking becomes more and more profitable, police investigators need to make use of all available means of monitoring suspects and stopping illegal activity as quickly as possible. A GPS tracking device provides an extra set of eyes for only the cost of the device, which saves innumerable dollars and man hours over time. It also makes it possible to follow a suspect across state lines and even out of the country, which provides valuable and otherwise difficult to obtain information for the investigation. With GPS tracking, departments will quickly see immense return on a wise investment.