I was just watching an episode of Poroit, and they made a big deal about a new investigation. It was a map of London, and they had little model cars set on it. The cars would radio in their location, and people would move the models around to coordinate their movements. Was it just a literary device, or a real thing?
I don’t know but its easy to see why they might. Before police had cars and radios, they had a callbox system for dispatching, patrol reports, alarms, etc. Those boxes were represented on maps and I don’t doubt they added little model cars to show reported position on the maps as police got behind the wheel.
I would hazard a guess that police cars (once they had radios) were simply assigned their area of the precinct to patrol. Easier…
Considering how fast cars move, the “cars on a map” idea would not likely be a regular thing.
Modern 911 operators have a computer system map that shows the current location & status of their police (and fire & ambulance) vehicles. That’s automatically maintained by transmitters in the vehicles.
Long ago when I drove taxi we updated the dispatcher as to what map zone we were in. I suppose the police used such a scheme as well. Resource tracking to assign assets. Some units may have been assigned to particular zones for entire shifts. But may have changed zones for some reasons. As Tim_T-Bonham.net notes, this is now automated.
Highly unlikely I would have thought. The map boards they used during WW2 to coordinate planes took a large team of trained people to keep up to date. Trying to do something like that for police cars in London would be impossible.
In The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) the Metropolitan Police chase the criminals using 1950’s radio cars and a map, complete with markers and a magnifying glass (but no model cars as far as I can see).
I’m sure movie makers became enamoured of the whole live map after it made for such good imagery in WW2 movies - especially those depicting the Battle of Britain. It provides a great format to allow a story to unfold, and makes everyone look competent with serious jobs to do, and easy ways of developing dramatic tension.
But as to actual need in day to day policing back in the 50’s. Seems a stretch. How often would they need to perform a real time coordinated operation across the city? Maybe when Poirot was involved and it was clearly a big deal, with mastermind criminals afoot.
I would not be surprised at a map on a pinboard with a few coloured pins as a quick system capable of useful depiction of a situation. Model cars? Really! A modern CIC uses a minimal symbology to represent the situational picture. Clutter and ambiguity is to be avoided.
I’d expect it would be at the precinct (or similar) level. A map of streets, overlaid with burglar/holdup alarms and callbox locations, overlaid with beat boundries, pinned to show important places like hospitals and public utility facilities.
The individual patrol cops don’t need pins in the map at all times but for incidents, stakeouts, parades, etc. If a squad leaves their beat, show it on the map. Pickpocket mission, pin it.
Edit: the maps predate cars!
We still do it in the US military. Doesn’t matter how many redundant computers and screens are tracking GPS locations in real-time. If you don’t update the markers on your paper “analog” map, that’s your ass!