WebM File (6.3 MB, 7 min.)
Project Description

Title Screen

National Institute of Justice

Program Produced Under Award Number

97-DT-CX-K002

2-D Concrete Penetrating Radar

(Music plays in the background)

(Video of police vehicle in motion)

Narrator: For law enforcement officers, life on the streets holds only one guarantee...

(Video shows police officer driving vehicle)

Narrator: Every situation will be different

(Video shows houses along the street as the police vehicle drives by)

Narrator: Facing unknown circumstances, one of the most critical objectives is to locate the suspect, indoors or outdoors, day or night.

Narrator: Pico Rivera, California, June 1997. Sheriff's deputies respond to a call at a business warehouse about the possibility of an armed and barricaded suspect.

(Scene change. Video shows Lt. Mark Thompson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department standing in front of a brick building.)

Lt. Mark Thompson (on screen): Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Special Weapons Team responded to this location to handle an armed and barricaded suspect. On our arrival, we found that we had a large warehouse. We had been told that there were also interior office spaces. Let's take a look inside.

(Lt. Thompson enters the building. The video shows a hallway with doors on each side.)

Lt. Thompson: Immediately inside the front door, the team found multiple offices with many interior doors, many closed closet doors. The situation ultimately resulted in a shooting with the suspect firing multiple rounds through the wall.

(Video shows bullet holes in the wall.)

Lt. Thompson: It was unknown just exactly where the suspect was until sometime later in the incident.

(Video shows a darkened warehouse)

Lt. Thompson: After clearing the office space, the team found a very large warehouse that contained several vehicles, a multitude of shelves, a lot of debris, providing many places where the suspect could have been hiding. It was pitch black inside this warehouse.

(Camera exits the warehouse through a door, moves down a hallway and eventually enters a small bathroom.)

Lt. Thompson: After clearing the office space and the warehouse, it was ultimately determined that the suspect was in all probability hiding inside a very small bathroom. In attempting to extract the suspect from the bathroom a tremendous gunfight erupted. Two deputies were wounded and the suspect was killed.

(Scene change. Music plays. Video shows the outside of the building again and a police vehicle pulls up in front. A police officer exits the vehicle and retrieves equipment from the car's trunk.)

Narrator: New motion detection technology, that was not available at the time of the Pico Rivera incident, today exists to aid law enforcement agents with hostage rescues, locating crime

suspects in unfamiliar locations, and for clearing and securing an area.

(Video shows the officer opening the briefcase sized through-the-wall surveillance device)

Narrator: This system is called motion detection radar. The unit consists of the antenna/transmitter/receiver, a remote transmitter, radar controller, and remote receiver.

(Video shows the officer removing the remote receiver from the briefcase.)

Narrator: This compact, lightweight system uses radar technology recently developed from the Department of Defense.

(Video shows a man walking in front of the officer. The device in the officer's hand emits sounds that change in tone as the man moves in different directions.)

Narrator: Motion detection radar translates a signal into a target area. Reflections from anything within the area come back to the radar. Any movement is detected and represented by an audible alert tone from the handheld receiver.

(Scene change. Video shows the officer and the motion detection radar system on one side of a brick wall.)

Narrator: Motion detection radar is not limited by line-of-sight. It can detect motion through non-metallic materials including concrete block walls, behind doors, amongst fumes, in the dark, or in a dense fog.

(Video now shows a man on the other side of the brick wall. The officer's handheld receiver is emitting tones indicating that someone is moving behind the wall.)

(Scene change. Video shows a split screen with the outside of the warehouse shown on the left and the inside shown on the right. An officer sets up the motion detection radar system next to the outside wall of the warehouse. Persons moving within are detected by the device.)

Narrator: In the following scenarios at the Pico Rivera crime scene, the motion detection radar is positioned to enable officers to detect movement in various areas throughout the warehouse.

(Scene change. The video shows a police officer setting up a second motion detection radar device.)

Narrator: Adding a second unit supplies additional information about the detection range.

(Scene change. Officers are attaching a motion detection radar device to an outside brick wall. Screen is then split in half, showing the outside wall on the left and the suspect moving through the warehouse on the right.)

Narrator: Through a brick wall, at a range of approximately 20 feet, a suspect is detected moving through the large warehouse area.

(Scene change. Video shows outside officers holding weapons)

Narrator: In violent situations or for forward operations, officers can position themselves as far as 200 feet from the unit for safety.

(Scene change. Video shows officer in the foreground operating the motion detection radar. The room in the background is completely dark.)

Narrator: In the pitch dark environment, radar quickly determines a suspect's presence, although he cannot be seen by the human eye.

(Scene change. Video shows suspect moving within an office in the warehouse. Officers are positioned on top of the office with the motion detection radar.)

Narrator: Inside the warehouse, through the wood and acoustic tile ceiling, the radar immediately determines the suspect's movement through the office below.

(Scene change. Video shows the outside of the warehouse. An officer is crouching beside a vehicle.)

Lt. Thompson: We respond to a variety of dangerous situations almost every day. Many of those situations involve armed, barricaded suspects, sometimes with hostages. We believe we can use this technology to help locate the suspects inside the location and resolve the situation in the safest manner possible.

(Scene change. Video shows movement through a darkened warehouse.)

Lt. Thompson: This [the Pico Rivera incident] is a fairly good example of a situation where the radar motion detector may have been able to provide some information as to where that suspect was.

End of Video