Police to record license plates rolling through Boulder City

By Jean Reid Norman

Saturday, July 25, 2009 | 1:59 a.m.

Come August, few visits to Boulder City will go unnoticed.

The Boulder City Police Department is buying two automated license plate readers to be mounted on patrol cars that will record every vehicle they come in contact with, both moving and parked.

While the police officers are on duty — whether they’re responding to a call or having coffee — the automated readers will be comparing all of those license plate numbers to databases of stolen cars, wanted persons and court warrants.

When they find a match, an alarm will sound in the car and a voice will tell the officer what was found — from an unpaid ticket to a felon on the run, said Nate Malone, spokesman for the company that makes the readers, ELSAG North America.

The Boulder City Police Department is spending $50,000 for the readers, Chief Thomas Finn said — $41,000 from its drug interdiction fund (money confiscated in drug cases turned over to the department after the case is completed) and $8,700 from a state grant, he said.

Finn first saw the system in use during a conference in Buffalo, N.Y.

“Just about every time they went out, they found stolen cars,” Finn said.

Where a police officer might be able to run 50 or 60 license plates in a shift, the system runs up to 1,200 a minute and does it automatically, Malone said.

The technology was created in Italy 30 years ago for use by its post office to read addresses, ELSAG North America CEO Mark Windover said. About 10 years ago, the technology was adapted for law enforcement use, and is now used by more than 600 police agencies in 50 states.

In addition to reading license plates and comparing them to databases, the system will take a photo of the plate and the car and record it for 30 days for future reference, Windover said.

Finn said that could be useful.

“Say an officer is driving around Boulder City on patrol during the daytime, and someone comes home and finds his house burglarized,” he said. “The officer can do a download of the vehicles observed with a few blocks’ radius of that home and get a suspect vehicle.”

In fact, the system helped find three girls during an Amber Alert in Atlanta using that function, Malone said. The license plate number publicized through the Amber Alert had been recorded on regular patrols, and the car was found within an hour.

Finn also expects the system to generate revenue from the city by finding people who failed to pay traffic tickets or are wanted on other municipal court warrants.

“Right now, we try to hunt down people who have warrants, but it’s hit or miss, because they work during the day,” he said. “This way, we don’t have to actively look for them.”

Police can also be trained to use the system to spot drug running that may come through town, providing the opportunity for the department to bring in more drug interdiction money, Malone said.

The patrol cars with the system will be obvious, because they will have the cameras mounted on their trunks, Finn said. But by the time a driver notices the cameras, it will be too late to avoid them.

“It’s a crime-fighting effort,” he said. “It’s to keep the criminals out of town, who often drive stolen cars.”

And no rights are being violated, because license plates are public information, Finn said.

Allen Lichtenstein, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, agreed.

“Someone’s license plate is not private or privileged information,” Lichtenstein said. “That is something that someone has no reasonable expectation of privacy about. They are designed to be read.”

Finn called the new system a force multiplier.

“We are just using technology to make us more efficient,” he said.