State police roll out crime-solving gear at open house in LR
Drones, a bomb robot, crash reconstruction equipment, drug-sniffing dogs and a whole lot of investigative technology were on display Saturday at the Arkansas State Police’s open house in Little Rock.
Families meandered around the state police headquarters as investigators and specialists showcased the best of the agency’s technology and crime-solving equipment.
“This is one of the best things we do, because it gets the community to see us,” said Cpl. Rod Cooper, a pilot of one of the state police’s three helicopters. “Some people don’t know all of the stuff we do around the state.”
The helicopter — a whiteand-blue behemoth casting a dark shadow in the headquarters parking lot — drew a lot of children and families who wanted to have their pictures taken while inside it.
Katrina and Jerome Prunera posed with their son, Victor, in the chopper and said they’d enjoyed learning about the police investigators’ tools.
“I mean, I had never even
seen the inside of a police car,” Katrina Prunera said.
“That’s a good thing,” Jerome quipped, smiling.
Cooper said that from even 6,000 feet in the air, the helicopter’s cameras and infrared visioning system can pick out a single person or vehicle. Cooper said that in the three years he’s piloted the aircraft, he’s been on rescue missions for lost hunters and on manhunts, and has even flown the chopper as an executive transport for dignitaries.
Whereas kids were drawn to the helicopter and the SWAT cars, curious adults flocked to the Criminal Investigation Division’s table, where fingerprinting materials and illicit substance identification kits were spread out on a black tablecloth.
Sgt. John Blackmon pointed to different fingerprinting powders and touted the superiority of what he called “old-school” techniques. Instead of using newer, digital scales to weigh drugs or other materials, Blackmon said he liked to use the reliable counterbalance scale.
“No batteries necessary,” he said, smiling as he showed the device to a college student. “No matter where you are or what you’re doing, this has got you.”
Blackmon works in the Criminal Investigation Division and spends time analyzing or lifting fingerprints from guns or other pieces of evidence.
“You get to work on something where you see the victim and you know the impact, and that’s what it’s all about,” he said, recalling a financial fraud case where elderly people were being scammed out of thousands of dollars.
Meandering around the parking lot, and drawing the eyes of children on their way to see the chopper, was Rino, a 5-year-old Malinois-and-German-shepherd mix that has “seized a lot of drugs and a lot of illicit material,” in his day, according to Rino’s handler, Trooper First Class Tim Callison.
Rino wagged his tail and leaned on Callison’s legs as children drew close and watched him.
“He’s my little buddy,” Callison said, reaching down to scratch the thick fur around Rino’s neck.
Another crowd favorite was the Andros FX bomb robot, a long-armed metal contraption that can safely disarm explosives and, at 6-feet tall, is nimble enough to reach inside a vehicle, according to Cpl. Josh Berry of the bomb squad.
All of the six members of the bomb squad can operate the robot, and the tool that’s used to control it, Berry said, is likely recognizable to any video game player.
“I bet you know how to use it better than I do,” Berry told a little, blond-haired boy before holding up the black-and-gray remote so the people crowded around could see it. “It’s an Xbox controller.”
Though the open house was an opportunity to show off and explain the state police’s tools and equipment, Cooper said, it was also an opportunity to build trust in the community and for the public to see officers in a friendly environment.
“And that,” he said, “is so important to us.”