Prince Albert police partner with Sask. Marshals to install biometric health sensors in cells
Devices will monitor health of people in custody
The Prince Albert Police Service will install health monitoring technology in some of its detention cells to alert staff if someone goes into medical distress.
Devices will be mounted on the ceiling cells and use radar to monitor heart rate, elevated temperature and respiratory concerns of someone inside the cell.
"We're hearing from our partner agencies and Estevan and Regina, who have implemented the software and have already reported back that it saved lives," Patrick Nogier, Prince Albert's police chief, said in an interview Tuesday.
The technology is to be installed in 12 of the 30 jail cells at the Prince Albert police station by the end of the year. Nogier said that it will help both the detainees and the officers.
He said the system activates only when the cell is occupied and alerts officers if someone is going into medical distress. It's attached to the ceiling and does not touch the inmate.
The police chief said the sensors can catch medical emergencies that could otherwise go unnoticed, like an overdose, or when someone has hidden drugs inside their body and it goes wrong.
"We've had circumstances where people are trying to hide it with hopes of recovering it at a later date, and the packaging breaks and then causes severe medical implications," he said.
Nogier said early intervention helps officers make better decisions and provide the person with medical attention if needed.
The cost to install the technology in the 12 cells is $45,000 to $50,000, to be provided by the Saskatchewan Marshals Service (SMS). Prince Albert police will cover the annual subscription cost of around $14,000 to $16,000.
SMS is sharing the cost in return for using the city's jail cells for arrests they make in the area.
"[Prince Albert police] wouldn't be billing us back now if we use their facilities. So it's kind of a break-even point for us, and it would be a benefit for clients that are in custody to make sure that they're in a safer location," Richard Lowen, deputy chief of enforcement for the Saskatchewan Marshals Service, said in an interview Wednesday.
Lowen was working with the Estevan Police Service when the same technology was installed there.
"We've seen it. It's demonstrated that it's already saved lives, so we knew it's a good system," he said.
In 2021, three people died in Prince Albert Police Service custody within 30 days.
Coroner's inquests into those deaths laid out a few recommendations, including installing infra-red security cameras, doing full searches of cells, doing a urinalysis in 24 hours, assessing smoke detectors, and making sure medical bags are properly stocked and visible.
Lowen said that the biometrics monitoring system goes further.
"It's better than human intervention. It's better than an infrared system or a smoke detector," he said. "So this system is going to be above and beyond any recommendations that were made."
WATCH | Prince Albert Police Service installs health monitoring technology in cells:
Concerns about 'surveillance creep'
Scott Thompson, a sociology assistant professor at University of Saskatchewan, said that whenever new technologies that have capacity to gather data are implemented, it raises privacy concerns.
"The concern is always about something called 'surveillance creep.' That is, we put something in place for one purpose that we might think is good, and then suddenly as the data is collected, people are looking into it and saying, 'hey, we can do these additional things,'" Thompson said in an interview.
"This is AI, this is big data, this is institutions wanting to gather as much data as they can in order to solve problems, I think we can applaud the police service for taking this kind of evidence led solution.… But as the general public, how do we ensure that this doesn't become a tool of oppression and harm?"
Lowen said data from the devices will be stored in the cloud through the company responsible for the installation, GT Global Services Inc. He said the system only logs heart rate, breathing and movement, but it does allows police to add more information.
Chief Nogier said he doesn't know yet if police will be adding more information to the records.
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