On the Road Again, But Now the Boss Is Sitting Beside You

Friday, May 14th, 2004

When I first read that workers were “chafing at GPS tracking” and “balking at having the boss constantly looking over their shoulders,” I thought, what’s the problem with the firm installing a GPS unit in its truck? As long as you know you’re being tracked, where’s the problem? Then I read the first anecdote in On the Road Again, But Now the Boss Is Sitting Beside You:

Without telling the patrolmen, the internal-affairs officer installed a global-positioning-system tracking device behind the front grills of several patrol cars in the spring and summer of 2001. Then he used a laptop to keep track of each car’s precise movements on detailed maps.

Sgt. Kuczynski soon netted five officers loitering over meals or hanging out in parking lots. Their log books indicated they were patrolling the townships’ streets or watching for speeders on its three highways.

Four of the officers pleaded guilty that year to charges of filing false records and were barred from working in New Jersey law enforcement. A fifth, Barry Krejdovski, a then-28-year-old officer who was literally caught napping on the job, disputed the charges. He was convicted in November on the records violation and a more serious charge that was later set aside.

Leave it to the police to entrap their own officers and punish them. Did it occur to Sgt. Kuczynski that he could have told his officers about the GPS units and eliminated the loitering without such a destructive hassle?

Posted in Policy, Technology | No Comments »

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Isegoria

On the Road Again, But Now the Boss Is Sitting Beside You

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