Bulldog's eye in the sky

Two of our favorite detectives, Bulldog and George, are talking to a person of interest in a church burglary case. So far, the guy denies any knowledge of the break- in, but the detectives have high hopes that this is their man.

George, an avid outdoorsman, owns a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) reader, which will measure the holder's exact location in latitude and longitude. The GPS is a real and practical tool - one of them is in George's pocket today.

The two detectives drive the suspect out to the crime scene where a church was burglarized. George hauls out his GPS and proceeds to explain to the suspect that satellites constantly take digital quality photographs made up of millions of pixels. These photographs cover every square inch of the earth's surface. That highly classified data is stored in vaults at the Central Intelligence Agency by time, date, and geographic coordinates.

Bulldog adds: "We're now connected to the CIA's state- of- the- art satellite system." With cell phone in hand, Bulldog continues: "If I call the GPS hotline and request a photograph of this location at the time the burglary occurred - you'll be deep in that nasty stuff - up to your ears."

"What do you mean?" the shaken suspect asks.

"He means," says George, "that downloading a high resolution 16 by 20 photograph from a satellite costs $23,000, and if your image is on that picture, you'll be required to pay cash for that picture."

Bulldog adds: "Of course, if you're not in the photo then obviously you're innocent, and there'll be no charge for the imaging. But if you were here that night - you're dog meat."

Back at headquarters, the suspect gives a written statement, confessing to everything and later, in court, enters a guilty plea.

Detectives Bulldog and George defend their deception, saying, "The government already has the technology to do what we've described, it's only a matter of time before we'll be using this technology on a routine basis."

CallTheCops@sc.rr.com