“Real-time traffic app Waze’s police spotting feature is a deterrent for dangerous driving, not a tool that can ‘track’ police officers, company officials said in response to concerns from the Los Angeles police chief,” Joseph Serna and Richard Winton report for The Los Angeles Times. “In a Dec. 30 letter to Google, which acquired Waze in 2013, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck… noted that in the days before Ismaaiyl Brinsley killed New York Police Department Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu on Dec. 20, he used the application to monitor police movements.”
“In a statement, Waze spokeswoman Julie Mossler said… ‘We think very deeply about safety and security and work in partnership with the NYPD and other police and departments of transportation all over the world … to help municipalities better understand what’s happening in their cities in real time. These relationships keep citizens safe, promote faster emergency response and help alleviate traffic congestion. Police partners support Waze and its features, including reports of police presence, because most users tend to drive more carefully when they believe law enforcement is nearby,'” Serna and Winton report. “The police-spotting feature allows users to drop an icon on a map indicating the rough location an officer was spotted, but it cannot “track” them or give an exact location, she said.”
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Police: Google’s Waze is a ‘stalking’ app – January 26, 2015