LADUE, MO – Fighting crime just got a little easier for St. Louis County police. New, three-dimensional technology is helping officers solve cases.
The St. Louis County Police Department has three Faro Focus S70 3D laser scanners. The new technology captures millions of points of information and takes thousands of photographs, turning it into a 3D image.
“We knew it would be beneficial. We didn’t know it would be this beneficial,” said Sargent Patrick Hokamp.
The laser scanners will reduce how long it takes to process a crime scene, saving man-hours and money.
“The old way we use to do it was take video and a 2D diagram. We’d go out there with tape measurers, take measurements, then come back to a computer, waste three to ten man-hours recreating a 2D image with that scene. With this, we scan it and it does all the work for us. We come back here, register it in the computer, and within an hour to an hour and a half we can have it in the hands of investigators to use during their investigation.”
Each laser scanner costs about $35,000, but police say it is money well spent. It is so realistic, it is as if you were there.
“We can go back into the scene at any time. If there’s a measurement we didn’t get in initially, we can go back in and find that measurement. It’s there. It’s going to be documented forever,” said Sgt. Hokamp.
