{"id":242614,"date":"2026-05-08T16:53:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T20:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/08\/pensacola-police-weigh-geofencing-use-for-crime-solving-but-warns-of-privacy-concerns\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T18:45:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T22:45:15","slug":"pensacola-police-weigh-geofencing-use-for-crime-solving-but-warns-of-privacy-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/08\/pensacola-police-weigh-geofencing-use-for-crime-solving-but-warns-of-privacy-concerns\/","title":{"rendered":"Pensacola Police weigh geofencing use for crime-solving but warns of privacy concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pensacola Police weigh geofencing use for crime-solving but warns of privacy concerns<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/weartv.com\/news\/local\/pensacola-police-weigh-geofencing-use-for-crime-solving-but-warns-of-privacy-concerns<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-08 16:53:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: weartv.com<\/a><\/p>\n

ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. — A geofence is a virtual map around a physical location. It’s a tool used by Escambia County Emergency Management to trigger alerts and notifications.<\/p>\n

While it’s purpose for emergencies is clear, the Pensacola Police Department says it could also be helpful in solving crimes.<\/p>\n

Pensacola Police Chief Eric Winstrom says it’s a fine line when using this type of information. He says law enforcement having access to location information can be extremely valuable, but it doesn’t come without its concerns for privacy.<\/p>\n

Chatrie vs. United States is a federal case out of Virginia, where a geofence warrant was used to find a man convicted of bank robbery.<\/p>\n

Police use this type of warrant to ask companies, like Google, for the data on every device near a crime scene.<\/p>\n

“It’s very valuable for someone that wants to know where a certain person was or where everybody was at a given time in a certain place,” Winstrom said. <\/p>\n

In this case, a geofence warrant was used to solve a bank robbery. But Chatrie argues the warrant was unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

“The question is, is it too broad of a net,” said Winstrom. “Did it violate the fourth amendment in that it collected information from a lot of people, a lot of very innocent people who just happened to be there?”<\/p>\n

For Chief Winstrom, geofence warrants are nothing new. He says he used the warrants when he was on the force in Chicago.<\/p>\n

“If we could get a hold of some of the information in an individual cell phone, we could say we knew for a fact that that person was present at a certain place in time,” Winstrom said. “And that’s helped in investigations that I’ve been involved in the past, certainly homicide investigations helped solve homicides.”<\/p>\n

Across the county at the Emergency Operations Center, a geofence has a totally different purpose.<\/p>\n

“If we needed to alert, maybe like a neighborhood, or like for like a shelter-in-place for like a gas leak or something like that, we can actually geofence,” Emergency Manager Travis Tompkins…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pensacola Police weigh geofencing use for crime-solving but warns of privacy concerns https:\/\/weartv.com\/news\/local\/pensacola-police-weigh-geofencing-use-for-crime-solving-but-warns-of-privacy-concerns Publish Date:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":242615,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/weartv.com\/resources\/media2\/16x9\/1280\/1320\/center\/90\/567f0e34-c27a-459c-990d-105f17a63bf9-winsgeofence.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242614"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":242616,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242614\/revisions\/242616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}