Nowhere to Run : High-Tech Computers, Devices Help Police Track Down Suspects

Simi Valley police had been looking for Maurice Lucien Vanwyk for weeks.

Convicted of two felony drunk-driving charges, the 28-year-old man had failed to meet the conditions of his probation. A warrant was issued for his arrest.

On June 20, investigators got a tip: Vanwyk would be meeting with a friend that night at the Radisson Hotel. Police staked out the hotel parking lot.

Sure enough, Vanwyk appeared and police tried to arrest him.

But the fugitive fled in his Jeep, and police pursued him to a remote hillside in the city, where Vanwyk jumped out of his vehicle and gave them the slip in heavy brush.

Time was Vanwyk’s pursuers would have admitted failure, called it a night and hoped for a second tip.

But now police departments across Ventura County have access to gadgets Dick Tracy could only dream about--infrared cameras that can detect a human presence where the naked eye cannot, electronic maps that guide helicopters through the night, laptop computers listing gang members and known criminals.

“Technology has gone a long, long way in helping us,” Simi Valley Police Sgt. Bob Gardner said. “When I first started, we didn’t have enough hand-held radios to go around. Now we all have cellular telephones.”

That night, Simi Valley police called in a Ventura County Sheriff’s Department helicopter armed with a $135,000 infrared camera, heavy-duty spotlight and an array of crime-fighting gizmos.

Within 30 minutes of the chopper’s arrival, Vanwyk’s body heat betrayed him to a computer screen in the helicopter’s cockpit. The high-tech device, designed to detect heat, is particularly effective at night. A police dog flushed him from his hiding spot under a bush, and he was arrested.

“It is like ‘Star Wars’ up there,” said Deputy Timothy Hagel, the crew chief of the helicopter that chased down Vanwyk.

During the pursuit, Hagel had a device that looked like a video game joystick in each hand and a color monitor in front of him. On the floor between his legs, a recorder took down everything said over the radio.

“It is like one giant Nintendo game,” Hagel said, speaking with his boss, Lt. David Tennessen, at the Sheriff’s Department’s hangar at Camarillo Airport.

“It is not a toy, it is a tool,” Tennessen quickly countered. Tennessen is in charge of the department’s fleet of three helicopters, on call for emergencies for every police department in the county free of charge.

Tennessen has been lobbying his bosses, including Sheriff Larry Carpenter and the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, to loosen department purse strings for more high-technology gadgetry for the county’s helicopters.

“I like to call the helicopters ‘force multipliers.’ It enhances our ability to catch someone,” he said. “Technology is not going to replace human beings, but it is going to make our jobs easier.”

Tennessen’s latest pitch is to install a “moving map” in the county’s helicopters. The helicopter that chased Vanwyk already has one of these devices installed. The Ojai manufacturer is allowing the Sheriff’s Department to test-drive the map.

The $15,000 device displays a Thomas Guide map page on the helicopter’s monitor. It shows the helicopter’s location and destination while computing its estimated time of arrival. U.S. Forest Service maps can also be used to help guide the helicopter over the rugged terrain of the Ventura County foothills.

A tiny icon of a helicopter appears on the map and flies across the screen as the actual chopper makes its way across the county. Gary Petrowski, the device’s inventor, predicts that someday his moving map or a similar instrument will be installed in every squad car.

“The federal government has been using something like this for years,” he said. “I think it will catch on with local enforcement.”

If it does, gone will be the days of the midnight beat cop frantically thumbing through a map book with one hand while holding a flashlight in the other.

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department’s “tricked-out” helicopter makes use of a variety of computers, surveillance equipment and other high-tech tools at law enforcement’s disposal.

Police departments in Oxnard and Ventura have a computer database of known crooks and gang members. Patrol officers are outfitted with laptop computers to file their reports.

And now the Ventura County Fire Department is shaking the money tree in Sacramento to buy specialized equipment to outfit an urban search-and-rescue team.

County Fire Chief James Sewell recently spent a day in Sacramento asking state legislators for $600,000. If given the money, the department would buy special excavating tools and sonar equipment to help locate victims trapped under rubble.

“We’re looking at some real high-tech type of instruments,” Fire Department spokeswoman Sandi Wells said.

Wells said the request has been submitted to an Assembly committee, which has yet to consider the item.

While pushing for more sophisticated crime-fighting equipment, Tennessen admits that technology has already brought the Sheriff’s Department into a whole new era.

“Things sure have changed since I started on the beat 17 years ago,” Tennessen said. “I started patrolling in a Chevy Nova. Now I’m in a McDonnell Douglas 530FF helicopter.”