CLEARWATER, Fla. (WSVN) — Most parents know they can track their teens thanks to the GPS in their phones. But a new company is taking it one step further with ankle monitors.
Frank Kopczynski owns Tampa Bay Monitoring, and says he started offering GPS ankle bracelet monitoring to parents after a mother asked for help with her daughter, who kept running away from home.
“I average a half a dozen a week all over the country because they see this ad, and they’re desperate,” Kopczynski told Fox 13.
He said he’s sold the bracelets to parents with children who are doing drugs, skipping school, or exhibiting signs of any range of troubling behavior.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JFhqTBpOv0
The service doesn’t come cheap, costing between $8 and $10 per day. Kopczynski says their advanced version even has a speaker and microphone so parents can call to check on their child.
“All his friends who are likely to be getting him into trouble suddenly realize that his ankle can talk to him, and it also can hear him,” he said.
They are also tamper resistant, Kopczynski notes: ““Even if they try to saw on this rubber, we know immediately that they are tampering with the device.”
One teen told the station he learned a hard lesson after being forced to wear the ankle bracelet.
“I was stealing cars. I was breaking into houses, so I had one on,” the unidentified 17-year-old said. “I didn’t like it. So I wouldn’t want no one else to wear it.”
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.