Thanks to GPS location devices, parents can monitor the location of their kids, boyfriends and girlfriends can find out if their significant other was actually where they said they were, and police have been able to make arrests and secure convictions.

But one of the more interesting aspects of the increased use of GPS in private as well as professional life is how employers use the technology to monitor employees.

In Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, Police Officer Ronald Goulet allegedly spent almost 40 work hours over two weeks with his cruiser idle.

In Salt Lake County, Utah, residents recently found among their bills for electricity and gas, another bill –  for police service. Salt Lake County hired a California company to send the bills to 40,000 households and thousands of businesses in unincorporated suburbs such as Magna, Millcreek and Emigration Canyon. According to a story in the Salt Lake Tribune, the first payments were due on April first. Homeowners will end up paying $174 for the year.

Should a police officer lose his job just for appearing in a pornographic movie? That’s the question posed in the termination of former Hollywood, Florida police officer Michael Verdugo. A fifteen-minute appearance in a bondage scene in a film called “Rope Rituals” cost Verdugo his job. Now he’s fighting to get it back. At the time he was fired, Officer Verdugo was also appearing as himself on the Home and Garden Television network’s “Design Star” – a home makeover program. Now he’s preparing to sue the police department for discrimination. Hollywood police fired Verdugo after the 1996 bondage video turned up on the Internet.

According to story in the Dallas Morning News, the gunman was killed in the afternoon shooting. Delta County Deputy Paul Robertson was hospitalized with injuries that were not life threatening after exchanging rounds with the gunman.

The deputy, from all accounts, was simply shopping when the suspect came to the store.