Enlisting Military Aid : Law enforcement: Police in Pasadena and other cities are adapting defense technology for use in the war on crime.

Pasadena police were hot on the trail of a suspected car thief when he abruptly bailed out of the automobile and fled into the night.

Until recently, continuing the pursuit would have meant sealing off a neighborhood and searching yards with officers, dogs and a helicopter beaming an overhead spotlight--a laborious, time-consuming process yielding uncertain results.

But on this night, using infrared automatic tracking technology, similar to guidance systems that allowed “smart bombs” to find their targets in the Persian Gulf War, officers in a helicopter “locked on” to the fugitive with surveillance equipment. They watched him hide in bushes and alerted patrol officers to his camouflaged location. They arrested him within minutes.

It was an example of how military technology, less in demand in an era of mounting defense cutbacks, has begun to trickle down to law enforcement. In Pasadena’s case, a Chatsworth defense company is giving the Police Department the use of the $120,000 tracking system in an effort to perfect it for police use.

“As we turn down the heat on the Cold War, the defense industry market is disappearing and so (contractors) are trying to convert,” said Bill Russell, commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Support Service Bureau. “The most obvious conversion is law enforcement, which is the greatest parallel to the military.”

In New York, transit police use night vision goggles, originally designed for military pilots, to find graffiti taggers and the homeless in subway tunnels. In San Diego, the California Highway Patrol is trying out a satellite system, originally created for military navigation, that could enable officers to quickly locate patrol cars to more speedily assist an injured officer.

Don Shinnamon, chief of the operations bureau of the Baltimore County, Md., police and chairman of the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police aviation committee, says various manufacturers have begun to tinker with miliary equipment to make it better suit the needs of police. Westinghouse, for instance, is marketing a police surveillance aircraft aimed at combatting drug smugglers, using radar similar to that of an F-16 fighter jet.

Experts say the flow of defense technology to civilian industries--not just police departments--will increase in the years ahead. Already, technicians have realized that they can produce better air bags for cars using a device similar to a missile detonator. Wide-band radar can be used to verify that the steel bars embedded in concrete on construction projects have been properly placed.

The problem is that this equipment is expensive. The question is, as Jack Kyser, chief economist with the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., puts it: “Is it really feasible? Is it durable for everyday usage?”

That’s what Pasadena police are trying to find out.

Although many police helicopter units have infrared cameras, Pasadena police are believed to be the first in the nation to use the cutting-edge equipment with an automatic tracking device. An infrared camera works by detecting heat, rather than light. With the automatic tracking device, police can monitor a specific target--say, a person crouched in a doorway--and follow the activities of that target.

The technology is so sophisticated that on a cool night the camera can show footsteps across a yard. Or it can show tire treads, indicating the direction in which a parked car has sped off--a valuable clue when police arrive at an abandoned site.

“Infrared was the biggest step for law enforcement, and this tracking is the next step beyond,” said Pasadena investigator and chief pilot Robert Mulhall. “It’s like using a typewriter, then switching to a computer and you don’t have to use whiteout and erasing tapes. You wonder, ‘How were we ever able to live without this?’ ”

When Pasadena’s police helicopter unit began using the infrared technology almost two years ago, its arrest rate increased 20%. The unit is instrumental in about 60 arrests each month, Mulhall said. With the automatic tracking system, Mulhall predicted that the arrest rate will rise at least another 10%.

A camera mounted beneath the helicopter relays an image to the television-like monitor in the two-person cockpit. The “observer,” sitting beside the pilot, can turn the camera in various directions or zoom in for close-ups, providing color images in daylight and infrared ones at night. The pictures can be instantly relayed to police headquarters.

Before the Pasadena police began using the automatic tracking device in June, the observer had to visually track suspects--a tricky task considering the number of cars and obstacles such as underpasses on the road, said Officer Joe Longoria, who has used the equipment.

In the course of a pursuit, it was difficult for observers to juggle surveillance with other tasks, such as manning the spotlight or checking the location of police cars. Each time an observer took his eye off the suspect’s vehicle, he ran the risk of losing it. But with the automatic tracking device, the observer is better able to help orchestrate chases, Longoria said.

On a recent night, Longoria and a pilot flew to a pharmacy where an alarm had gone off.

Flying high and using the infrared camera, Longoria could see two people on the side of the building. Because the helicopter was so far away, the suspects “knew we were there, but they didn’t think we could watch them,” Longoria said. As Longoria watched with the infrared camera, the two burglars broke in; he summoned officers in squad cars.

Without the automatic tracking infrared technology, the police would have flown low and put their spotlight on the suspects. “We probably wouldn’t have made that arrest,” Longoria said.

As a result, Longoria and the other officers who use the system swear by it.

“You could fly over the Arroyo Seco at 100 m.p.h. and tell in three minutes if anyone was there,” Mulhall said.

The tracking system--developed by Carl F. Konoski, president of Chatsworth-based Dynametric Systems Co.--is still being perfected. Konoski is fine-tuning software so the system will not get confused when, for instance, a vehicle enters a tunnel. Konoski said he chose the Pasadena police because of “their spirit of adventure.”

Konoski meets regularly with the pilots and observers, quizzing them about the system’s strengths and weaknesses. In several months, he hopes to have a perfected model. In exchange for their input, the Pasadena police will receive a free system.