A blue wooden sign with golden engraved letters reads "City of Syracuse, Dept. of Police" on a green lawn outside of the police station downtown. A blue sky shines down on the scene.
Syracuse Police headquarters on South State Street in downtown Syracuse. Credit: Julie McMahon | Central Current

The Common Council will vote Tuesday on whether to give the Syracuse Police Department the money to buy technology to better track which officers are driving department vehicles and how fast cars are being driven during crashes. 

The department has also requested $3.2 million for new vehicles.

SPD’s request for money to buy the technology comes in the wake of reporting by Central Current about officers crashing their cars. Syracuse police officers have been found to be responsible for hundreds of crashes, many of which have grave consequences. 

The department has struggled to discipline officers who crash their cars repeatedly. 

SPD officials have requested $112,000 to pay for the radio frequency identification equipment. The tracking services would come from Astus.

The department plans to install the equipment in 125 of its 142 patrol cars, said Deputy Chief Richard Shoff. 

A majority of the $112,000 will cover the cost of the equipment and installing it. The city would then pay an annual licensing fee of $19,500.

Department officials believe the technology will allow the department to streamline the process for officers to access vehicles. Currently, officers are supposed to sign out the vehicles, but some officers drive cars without signing them out, Shoff said. 

The RFID technology would require officers to scan into the car. That would then allow the department to keep track of who is accessing the vehicles, when they are accessing them, and where they are driving them.

The department also hopes the RFID technology will increase accountability for drivers involved in crashes, Shoff said. The department will have access to data on the speed at which officers are driving, which Shoff said will make it easier to determine an officer’s role in a car crash.

“It’s particularly important if there’s a crash involved, we’ll know how fast the car was going the time to crash,” Shoff. “There’s some tools for that knowledge, this is just a better tool.”

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...