The Korean National Police Agency said on the 22nd that it held the awards ceremony for the 12th Science-Based Policing Idea Contest, co-hosted with the Ministry of Science and ICT. The grand prize went to an idea that enables rapid tracking even when an electronic location-monitoring device has been damaged.
According to the police agency, 13 winning teams received certificates and a combined 19.8 million won in prize money at the ceremony, held at 2 p.m. at Songdo Convensia in Incheon. The grand prize winner received a prime minister's award and 5 million won, the top excellence award carried a citation from the deputy prime minister and science minister along with 3.5 million won, and excellence awards came with citations from the police commissioner and the president of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), plus 1.2 million won each.
The police agency and the science ministry have held the contest annually since 2015, open to both the public and police officers. This year's competition ran for 40 days from June 15 to July 24 and drew 474 submissions.
This year's grand prize went to Yoo Jo-dong, a senior police officer at Michuhol Police Station under the Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency, who proposed a device that sprays a special substance when an electronic monitoring device is tampered with, making the wearer easier to track. The technology aims to address the difficulty of tracking stalking offenders and others who damage their electronic ankle monitors.
The top excellence award in the police division went to Kim Jung-hoon, a senior police officer in the forensic science division of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, for a proposal titled "smart safety goggles for forensic investigation." The device combines the light sources and filters needed for crime scene examination into a pair of goggles, protecting forensic officers' eyes while allowing faster and more accurate searches for evidence.
The top excellence award in the public division went to a team of Park Jun-hyung, Choi Sung-wook, Kim Jun-hyung and Jung Sung-hoon for a "bulletproof shield robot for urban counterterrorism operations." The robot pairs a tracked drive system with a ballistic shield and uses LiDAR-based semi-autonomous tracking and remote control to reduce the equipment burden on officers and improve their safety during high-risk operations.
Other proposals selected for excellence awards included a detector for concealed location-tracking devices, a method for rapidly developing latent fingerprints on wet evidence, and an artificial intelligence system that recommends patrol car deployment and simulates patrol routes.
"This contest confirmed the strong interest and expectations that both the public and officers in the field have for science-based policing," said Park Hyun-soo, head of the police agency's Future Policing Policy Bureau. "We will work to ensure that the winning entries and other strong proposals are developed through research and applied to solving problems in the field."