NYPD now has Android smartphone arsenal to pull up records, identify perps

Thanks to an NYPD pilot program, over 400 officers have special Android smartphones that allow them to pull up suspect data on the spot, according to the New York Times. Patrol car-mounted laptops can be slow and cumbersome, while the call-disabled handsets (which look like Samsung's Rugby Smart in the image above) let patrolmen see a suspect's criminal record on the spot and even know if a felon hides drugs "in his left sock," according to one cop. The custom app can also dig up info like open warrants, arrest and incident records, orders of protection and photos of everyone who's been arrested in a particular building, for instance. They can even drum up the location of every video camera pointed at a particular spot -- so, watch where you spit that gum, scofflaw.

[Image credit: New York Times]