The Louisiana State Police lacks a basic police tool that is available to much smaller agencies across the state and around the U.S.

This state’s police vehicles lack GPS tracking devices, commonplace for public vehicles elsewhere.

Therefore, it is unable to track the locations of its troopers, leaving dispatching in the hands of people who must keep track of officers on paper and who must rely on simple guesswork and luck.

That is unacceptable. Even more troubling, it is just the most recent problem to surface, causing the public to questions the efficacy of the agency’s oversight.

There have been some high-profile scandal to hit the agency.

One officer was suspended after his on-duty sexual exploits were reported by his girlfriend after she was charged with a drug crime.

Another racked up $147,000 in overtime in 2016, much of it for time he was filmed by a television news crew at his own house.

In yet another, a group of troopers took off on an expensive road trip – for which some were paid overtime – to a conference in California that included a stop in Las Vegas.

While GPS tracking of police units will help supervisors keep tabs on their employees’ whereabouts, it will never be an acceptable substitute for good management.

In the above cases, a little competent oversight would have eliminated the problems.

Had their superiors not approved the useless road trip on the taxpayers’ dime, the traveling troopers would have been thwarted in their quest to waste state money.

And just a bit of questioning could have raised red flags about the $147,000 in overtime accrued by the trooper whose regular pay was less than $100,000.

But GPS tracking would give the State Police a common police tool that is bound to help oversee the troopers.

Even the acquisition of this ability, though, has been undermined by the State Police itself.

A spokesman this week said that the agency had the GPS purchase had been approved as part of the State Police’s budget last year. Mid-year budget cuts stripped it from the plans. However, the police did not request it in this year’s budget because officials thought it had already been purchased.

Access to a basic police tool will certainly be an upgrade for the State Police.

With that said, there are other, deeper problems afflicting the agency that will not be solved with this or any other technological upgrade.

 

Editorials represent the opinion of the newspaper, not of any individual.