Orange is adding dozens of license plate reader cameras throughout town – they’ve become common in many cities in the county – giving police access to a list of vehicles that enter and exit the city.
The cameras, according to city staff, will help track down cars associated with crimes, especially retail theft.
“We are a little bit behind the curve in our crime-fighting technology,” Police Chief Dan Adams told the City Council recently. “Getting this system will move us from low level to high mid-range in technology toward better effective crime fighting, along with assisting other departments.”
The cameras, from Atlanta-based Flock Safety, record license plates of cars that pass by, along with logging information such as the make and color of a vehicle and how many times it’s passed. Police can set alerts for vehicles they are looking for.
The city will install 43 license plate cameras and 13 video cameras. Lt. Kevin Plog said in a presentation that the cameras are a cost-effective way to collect license plate data at all the places vehicles can enter and exit the city.
The images and license plate data are stored for 30 days and can be shared with police agencies in other cities.
The city will be able to work with homeowner associations and businesses that wish to provide police access to their cameras with the software that comes with the contract, officials said.
Data shared from cameras in other cities have helped Orange police apprehend suspects already, Adams said.
Councilmember Jon Dumitru said license plate cameras were able to catch a suspect when his car was burglarized in Orange.
Plog gave other examples of the license plate readers helping investigations. He cited a domestic violence and kidnapping case where detectives learned that the suspect’s vehicle had been detected in Stanton, which led to an arrest. Another case used a camera’s “vehicle fingerprint” feature, where identifying characteristics of a car are searched for, which led to a suspect’s vehicle being located by a Garden Grove police camera from Flock.
The city will spend $400,000 for a two-year contract to have the cameras. More than 150 police agencies in the state use the cameras, Plog said.
The City Council unanimously approved the contract at its March 26 meeting. Adams said the system can be up in running within a couple of months.
The cameras don’t have facial recognition or conduct traffic enforcement.
Plog said every marked patrol vehicle got in-car license plate readers a year ago.
“We take that, and we couple it with the additional data that we can get from these fixed license plate readers all over the city,” he said, “it’s going to ultimately result in a decrease in crime and us being able to catch more of those people who are responsible for committing crimes in the city.”
Source: Orange County Register
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