NYPD Wants GPS Pill Bottles
BALDWIN: New York City combating just about everything these days, and limited the amount of soda you can drink, just put a new huge gun control law in place, and now it is trying to put a GPS in prescription painkiller bottles to combat the surge of pharmacy robberies. Commissioner Ray Kelly of NYPD saying Oxycontin armed thefts are booming and he wants to stop it. He's announced this plan to put bait bottles, that's what he's calling them, on store shelves, fake painkillers equipped with an invisible GPS device. Should a robber steal it, like this person, suspected of stealing from a pharmacy, the GPS apparently is going to go off, shows the person's location, tracks the person, hopefully leads police to bigger stashes across the city and probably elsewhere. HLN law enforcement analyst, Mike Brooks, is here. How exactly does this work?</s>MIKE BROOKS, HLN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, Brooke, what it is going to be, because you've got robberies and burglaries, breaking into pharmacies after hours, going in, stealing these things.</s>BALDWIN: Killing people in some cases in Long Island.</s>BROOKS: Killing people -- right in Long Island and last April in East Harlem, there was an off duty cop, pumping gas across the street, confronted two robbers, shot and killed one of them after holding up a pharmacy for pain killers. So what's going to happen? You're going to have basically your pill bottle sitting on the little stand, you take that pill bottle off, and it starts emitting a signal all right then and there. Now these are going to be sealed. So let's say you pick it up and shake it, it is going to sound like there is pills inside that particular bottle.</s>BALDWIN: They're fake pills.</s>BROOKS: But they're fake pills and you have your little GPS tracking device inside of that. They have been using this technology for quite some time with banks because you will have sometimes a bottle of money. You'll have that if a bank is robbed, they'll pull those out. They give you the bait money if you will --</s>BALDWIN: Follow the money. Follow the money.</s>BROOKS: And you follow that signal. They just had a bank robbery today in Houston where they used the same technology to track the car.</s>BALDWIN: So is this for potential pharmacists with ill means or is this for people who would come in to try to steal the bottles, what kind of pills are we talking?</s>BROOKS: Well, this was developed by -- it was developed by Purdue Pharma, which is the maker of Oxycontin. You know, so they are the ones behind this saying, we want to help protect, number one, our brand, and secondly, because they come in, there are so many robberies, so many burglaries happening now just for these particular painkillers. We want to get this technology to try to track these people down, and maybe be a preventive measure because if you know what you're taking could have a GPS device in it, and you could get locked up, maybe that would discourage somebody. But they're hoping that all 1,800 pharmacies in the city of New York kind of get on the bandwagon with this program. It already has gone on in Suffolk County, just not outside the city.</s>BALDWIN: So you don't think some of these potential criminals would be hip to the GPS devices could be able to determine which pill bottles had GPS devices and could go around it.</s>BROOKS: Well, you know, if you go in and you take a bottle and you shake it, there are pills, are you going to take the time to take the tape off and the top off and the foil and the cotton, no. You want to get in, you want to get out, and hopefully they'll get out with one of these decoy bottles.</s>BALDWIN: Also I'm just curious, big picture, explain what typically happens if you have a successful robbery say in a pharmacy and you grab a bunch of Oxycontin. Where then do the pills typically walk?</s>BROOKS: You can take them, you might be someone who is getting paid by someone who is taking these and distributing them to other places around the state, outside the state. So a lot of times you'll say, I'll give you x amount. You can have so many pills so much money, want you to hit this particular one or they'll put in an order. I want 200 of a particular painkiller, go out and get them and here is what I'll pay you. That's what these perps are doing.</s>BALDWIN: OK, Ray Kelly says no more, no more.</s>BROOKS: And I don't blame him, absolutely.</s>BALDWIN: Mike Brooks, thank you.</s>BROOKS: Thanks, Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: Appreciate it. A look here at what is to come over the president's next four years including why the Middle East could be his biggest challenge. But first, here's a quick look at the markets as the Dow is up 25 points at 13,509. Forgive me, down, that is a minus, blurry eyes here, down 25 points. Back after this.