Until recently, the cost of thermal imaging equipment restricted its use to police helicopters and specialist teams. As the equipment has become much more affordable, handheld cameras can now be provided for police units or even individual officers.

The main applications for the police are concerned with covert surveillance and reconnaissance, pursuit of suspects and searching for missing persons. While it is possible to hide from light, people cannot easily disguise their own body heat, thereby giving the officer ‘night vision’. Examples of the use of vehicle or handheld thermal imaging cameras for this purpose are:

• Detecting suspects in darkness and poor visibility
• Tracking suspects in the open without the subject being alerted
• Quickly sweeping a scene in total darkness to locate either a suspect or a missing person
• The image storage capability of the instrument enables an officer to safely look round corners
• Search operations can be accelerated by detecting the heat signature of a footprint on a carpet or a handprint on a door knob.
• Vehicle search operations can be accelerated by detecting the heat signature of a vehicle that has been recently operated