I know that police departments use X, K, Ka band radar and some use Laser guns. Is this decided at the state, county, or department level? Is this information something they can keep to themselves or are they forced to share it? If so, does anyone know where I can look? I know I could just call the local department but I am curious to see many different areas. Thanks.
I started a thread on this ~ a year ago but I did not get any useful replies - http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=156100
My radar detector will display the band of radar being used. Based on my experience a police department may get new radar equipment but they will continue to use the older equipment, so one department could be using several different types of radar. LIDAR (IE Laser) is expensive and (AFAIK) requires the officer to stand outside of his car. My local and state police have a handfull of lasar guns in addition to many traditional K band guns and a couple of the ‘instant on’ K band guns.
One way would be to get a ticket. The evidence used against you will be available in court (or through discovery). As a side note I have used the Freedom of Information Act to find out info like this after getting a ticket (easier that a real discovery process).
Actually now that I think about it, there is no reason why you wouldn’t be able to get similar info by sending a FOIA request to the police asking for records concerning their equipment. You might even ask a cop or call the PD and ask, its not like they have anything to hide that you couldn’t find out anyway.
FOIA laws vary of course, and I’ve had mixed results. For example the CA hiway patrol went out of their way to give me everything I asked for and then some, while the Sacramento PD had the city attorney draft a 12 page response outlining why they wouldn’t respond with any information (which was in violation of the law, but what am I going to do? I’m sure they covered their ass from any real trouble by responding.)…
Over the last 20+ years I’ve worked in Wisconsin for 3 different departments (1 full time, 2 part-time. Not all at the same time, of course). The decision about almost all equipment is decided at the individual department level. Every department here uses a different kind. It’s about 75% K-band, 20% laser, and 5% Ka-band. And I can tell you that nobody in the state uses X band anymore. And photoradar is illegal here per state statute.
I do know that back in the 70’s during the 55 speed limit insanity the Feds bought a lot of radar guns for departments. But I don’t know if the departments got to choose what gun they got or not. But that was a long time ago.
One department I was on part-time had a laser gun. They had just come out (this was about 14 years ago) and the chief just had to have it. Which was dumb because we did mostly water patrol and it didn’t work well on a patrol boat (it was hard to hold it steady and you kept getting an error display).
So how do you give a fish a ticket for swimming too fast?
