Government Technology - October 2008 - (Page 49)

medical examiner has a mobile morgue and trailers that would need to be towed by a heavy-duty vehicle. “We have trailers with weapons of mass destruction chemical suits and medical equipment ready to haul, but we had no way to tow them,” Lee said. “We are a target,” Lee explained. “The Golden Gate Bridge is a target, and we have other buildings that are considered high-risk and are targets.” San Francisco’s trucks are equipped with the Rumbler and a light bar with two modes, one for police and one for other city personnel, including the medical examiner. Police have a special key that activates the red and blue lights and the siren. Other city officials use the amber-colored lights. Other than that, the trucks look like a regular city vehicle; they’re white with city decals. “The concept of these trucks is to be available citywide for any employee who needs to get in the truck and tow trailers full of equipment,” Lee said. Since it was a homeland security grant that yielded the funds, the police department was tasked with purchasing and maintaining the vehicles so it asked that they be vehicles police could use, Lee said, thus the red and blue light bars. The two trucks were purchased in March with the grant, and Lee said the city plans to buy two more, one for crime scene investigation and another for the SWAT team. There’s really nothing for the officer to learn, except that when he taps the horn, it produces 10 seconds of rumbling, and if he wants 10 more seconds, he taps the horn again. “Traditionally when the officer taps the horn, the siren would change tone,” Sanchez explained. “It would change from a wail to a yell, so a faster pattern, and then the light bar pattern would speed up. Now when the horn is tapped, the Rumbler will kick on and the light bar will speed up and go into intersection clearing mode. “It’s a low frequency, so — in addition to providing a contrasting sound where you have a high-low — it’s actually a subwoofer, so there’s actually tactility as well as sound,” Sanchez said. “You actually feel this as you would feel the bass coming from a vehicle.” The Rumbler’s intensity depends on the surroundings, Sanchez said. “It was designed for urban areas. The ideal performance is in a very heavily congested area where there’s something to reverberate off of, such as heavy traffic, a road with K rails [concrete barriers], in between buildings, semitrucks, when there is something for that sound to actually bounce off of, it becomes more effective. The more concentrated the area, the more you pick up on the feeling of it and not just the sound,” Sanchez said. “It doesn’t blast your ears when you’re inside because the speakers are on the front,” Lee said. “But it’s a different feeling.” VISIT WWW.GOVTECH.COM TO SEE THE RUMBLER IN ACTION. 49 Government’s 24/7 Online Video Site Event Highlights • News Reports • Newsmaker Interviews www.govtech.com/gttv http://www.govtech.com http://www.govtech.com http://www.govtech.com/gttv http://www.govtech.com/gttv

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - October 2008

Government Technology - October 2008 Contents Point of View On the Scene Big Picture Four Questions for... Letters Cover Stories: Border Crossing The Australian E-Connection Easy Rider Northern Exposure Technology on the Cheap Ditching the Desktop Heightening the Experience Pipe Dream Falling Between the Cracks Come Together, Right Now... It's a ... Car? Digital State of the Art Spectrum Products Two Cents signal:noise

Government Technology - October 2008

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