WASHINGTON — Earlier this week, Washington Nationals’ Manager Matt Williams was sitting in traffic giving a radio interview when he was suddenly side-swiped by a car in the midst of a police pursuit.
Williams was stopped at a light near the ballpark when the suspect’s vehicle hit his car.
But that chase might have been avoided with new technology that a developer calls a safer alternative for police.
“It’s a tag that’s launched from the patrol car and affixes itself to the back of the suspect vehicle,” says Trevor Fischbach, president of Starchase.
The GPS tag sticks to the suspect’s car both through an adhesive and a magnet, he says, sending back the suspect vehicle’s location to dispatch.
Fischbach says it may have helped spare Williams’ car.
“Let’s say D.C. metro had the technology — Arlington, Fairfax and neighboring jurisdictions would also be able to look at that mapping,” he says, so if the suspect went from one jurisdiction to another, police could work together to make an arrest.
The technology is not yet being used locally.
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