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twitterLicense plate reader nets no arrests, but hopes are high
Boulder City authorities say technology can still be a powerful tool to fight crime
Mona Shield Payne / Special to the Sun
Officer Thomas Healing discusses the width perimeter capabilities of the license plate readers affixed to his Boulder City Police patrol vehicle.
Monday, Sept. 14, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.
Mobile Plate Hunter - Salem, Mass.
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Beyond the Sun
In their first weeks on the road, the Boulder City Police Department’s license plate readers haven’t put anyone behind bars. They haven’t spotted any stolen cars or suspected drug runners cruising through town.
But Officer Thomas Healing, who drives one of the two patrol cars equipped with the new technology, has discovered that one of the vehicles in the Police Department’s fleet has a license number that matches a stolen vehicle in another state. His machine provides him a noisy alert every time he passes it in the police station’s parking lot.
The Boulder City Police Department spent $50,000 of drug interdiction and grant money to buy the system that Police Chief Thomas Finn calls a “force multiplier.”
The system checks 60 license plates per minute, Healing said, as opposed to 50 to 60 plates per shift that a typical officer can do.
The technology was created about 30 years ago in Italy to automate its post offices, said Mark Windover, chief executive officer of ELSAG North America, which makes the system Boulder City uses. It was adapted for law enforcement 10 years ago and now is used by more than 600 police agencies in 50 states, he said.
The system in Boulder City consists of three cameras mounted on the trunk of a police car — two on the driver’s side pointed at angles in opposite directions and one on the passenger’s side pointed forward at an angle. The cameras on the driver’s side have 50mm lenses to capture images across several lanes of traffic, Healing said. The one on the passenger’s side has a 25mm lens to get a look at cars one lane over or parked at the curb.
The computer already installed inside the police car has software that shows photos of the license plates as they are taken, beeping softly with each one. When it finds something that doesn’t match, it lets out a hoarse, staccato alert followed by a computerized voice saying whether the license plate is potentially stolen, has a warrant attached or some other problem.
The software continues to beep loudly and steadily until the officer checks it against the photo and either accepts or rejects the information.
The extra camera on the driver’s side helps officers identify vehicles from states that do not require front license plates, Healing said. As the vehicle passes the police car, the rear camera captures a picture of the back plate.
The cameras seek out reflective material that has text to identify as license plates. Often it will record a sign. During a recent demonstration, it recorded the sign for City Hall and the Police Department and alerted Healing that a sign for Hoover Dam was a stolen plate.
“Look, it took a picture of a fence there,” Healing said. “It read it as 11111111. You just have to get used to that.”
Because of the sensitivity and the potential to incorrectly identify a license plate, Healing said, no stops are made just on the basis of an alert. Officers run a suspicious plate through the data base manually to double check the automated reader before pulling someone over, he said. The extra step takes only a few seconds.
The hope is to identify suspicious activity that otherwise could fall through the cracks, Healing said. The automated reader saves the photos of license plates and associated GPS coordinates for 30 days, so if a crime is recorded in a neighborhood, he can go back and check to see whether he might have gathered information that would shed some light on it.
The ultimate goal, he said, is to get information from the Drug Enforcement Administration on vehicles being used for drug trafficking on U.S. 93 and 95, two of the north-south routes between Mexico and the United States that go through Boulder City.
Healing said he feels lucky that he was one of the two officers to get the system on his car.
“We are going to make the best of it,” he said.
Jean Reid Norman can be reached at 948-2073 or jean.norman@lasvegassun.com.
Discussion: 33 comments so far…
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I said that when the news came out, here where I live, they are waiting for the day to catch somebody yet after years of using it. then you will forget it like we did down here. live goes on, stay out of trouble and that toy is not for you.
1984......some how i feel less safe..
may I say "life goes on", now that's the right way...too early in the morning for me.
"discovered that one of the vehicles in the Police Department's fleet has a license number that matches a stolen vehicle in another state."
Boulder City must have a tight budget if they steal police cars from other states.
Im all for this if it keeps these illegals off the road. They need to also start deporting the illegals that go through their system.
I love las vegas, you just made my day.
Sorry, this is BS! I live in BC and just this weekend one of the police cars equipped with the camera was sitting off Ville. This is a residential neighborhood. If they are trying to use this camera as intended, why are they not on the highway or downtown area where the traffic is? Somehow the word "entrapment" comes to my mind.
There is nothing more frightening or dangerous than a bored, small town Police force with a big budget.
I do not believe this software has the ability to identify individual occupants of a perfectly legal automobile as 'illegals' however.
Depending on how fast license information is loaded into the database, it COULD be a useful LE tool. Can a robbery, kidnap or carjacking taking place 10 minutes earlier in Vegas be read by this machine if put into the 'system' immediately after the info is added to the 'system'?
Like most traffic related enforcement technology (red light cameras being a good example) this tool will become little more than a new 'tax' upon the citizens in the form of increased traffic fines (look out those missing front plates!!).
"entrapment" is widely misunderstood. The simplest way to think about it is that police entrap you if they cause you to commit a crime you would not otherwise have committed.
Less simply,
Defendant bears the burden of producing evidence of governmental instigation, for purposes of an entrapment defense
Once the defendant puts forth evidence of governmental instigation, for purposes of an entrapment defense, state bears the burden of proving that the defendant was predisposed to commit the crime.
Adam12345, papo, I dont understand that you are saing, please translate to street language, I went to the University long time ago, but to deliver soda and cookies to the machine.
i thought it was prohibited/illegal 4 the police just 2 randomly "run your plates" against their data-base w/o any probable cause.didnt a cop out n north town get n trouble 4 that a few yrs ago.
they do it all the time. an air freshener hanging from your rear view is probable cause.
dodgerchuck,
It is not illegal to run license plates. It IS illegal to use that information for anything other than law enforcement purposes.
They need to get these cameras in Clark County! They'll be catching people all day long.
How about CHP using them for I-15 traffic? It would be nice if they would actually catch the criminals before they get here!
"There is nothing more frightening or dangerous than a bored, small town police force with a big budget."
Amen!
sheep line up for slaughter....no one is outraged???? by the intrusion pretty soon they will be scanning you house...for anything out of line.... Hey I'm all for it"" LMAO
"Look, it took a picture of a fence there," Healing said. "It read it as 11111111. You just have to get used to that."
That made my day. Just a reminder that computers process and do not think.
I wonder if they have access to license plates out of Mexico and Canada?
these are perfectly legal, but i feel VERY unethical.
we've seen time and time again that cops are not holy. there are many BAD COPS out there and them being able to scan a plate, know that person's address...and knowing at that very minute they are not at home...how long until a cop says "hmmm...that porsche 911...that guy probably has money...and he's parked here at the wal-mart...if i could pull him over...and keep him here for 20 - 30 minutes...i could call my "home-boys" and go clean out this guys' house...pick me up an extra few hundred dollars a week".
or how soon until these show up on the black market...someone scans a hot girl driving all alone in a car...finds out her address...waits for her to go to sleep and then rapes her?
and how soon until a liberal sees a gun-rack or "national rifle association" sticker on your truck and decides to follow you home and take your gun?
THAT is why i don't like these plate readers.
Wow stevem! License plate readers are going to cause cops to have other cops burglarize your house and rape your girlfriend? Give me a break.
There are bad people EVERYWHERE, including the police force, but guess what? Bad cops are very far and few in between compared to other careers.
No cop on this side of the US is going to give up their good career, pension and benefits to break into your home and hurt anyone. And if one of them did? They go to jail just like everyone else.
This is the future: like it, or get legal plates and stop driving around in a stolen car.
did i say cops would have other cops do it?
nope.
please, read before you comment.
this device could be used in an infinite number of scenario's, all as plausible as those posted by stevem. Just big brother, getting bigger...
Every wonder why the license plate lettering style was changed several years ago? (Easier for video surveillance systems to read.) Or why there is a video camera at almost every light in Las Vegas?
Read "No Place to Hide" by Robert O'Harrow for a shocking glimpse of just how big our Big Brother has gotten.
Did the police department return the stolen car? Or was that just a "faulty system".?
Police State. -"Read slow with emphasis in Elmo's voice because it's the word of the day on sesame street."
Do any non-law enforcement citizens reckon that Law Enforcement would consider for one second displaying in large decals on the side of their cruisers their complaint/misconduct record? You know... like maybe put a big 5sac if they've had 5 complaints of sexually assaulting/groping female suspects... maybe a big 10efc if they've had 10 complaints of excessive force against a suspect?
You really want a vision of the end game?
One day, every vehicle on the road will be tracked in real time as dots on a map on a screen in the cruiser. EVERY vehicle on the road will have the remote disabling capabilities of law enforcement Bait Cars.
It is as simple as this. It will be done because it is in their best interests. It will be done when it can be pulled of successfully. Until then, I see these new cruisers being used like the Google Street View cars. Not as much just scanning for criminals, but for data on who is where and when, and how on every street, parking lot etc. Most people don't realize what that kind of data is for let alone why it is important.
stevem - all of your examples can happen now. The officers can simply ask their dispatch to run a tag and they will have the name and address of the owner, or they run it on their in car computer. The device they are using only makes running plates easier and quicker, and doesn't require officer intervention unless they get a "hit".
Babyboomer - if you re-read the article, you will find they said a tag on one of the cars in their fleet matches the number of a stolen vehicle from another state. They didn't say the car in their fleet was stolen. Since most states us a format of 3 number and 3 letters, or 3 letters and 3 numbers, it's not uncommon for them to run just a tag number and get a stolen vehicle hit.
The bottom line is this.......all of the information they can garner from using the license plate reader is available presently on their computer or through their dispatch. The reader will allow them to automatically read plates to determine if a plate might be wanted in connection with a stolen car, warrants, or other reason. They will just be able to check more plates in an hour with the reader than they could have running them manually.
As a daily driver in the Boulder City area, I find it odd that a town of this size has so much available cash to spend on such projects. If there is so much drug interdiction money being captured in BC, why hasnt Henderson, or Metro picked up on this?
With these departments constantly holding out their hands for more funding, this seems like a key to the candy store. Wake up!
Browse through a Gall's police catalog: It is chock full of the latest & greatest toys and gadgets for police departments nationwide. Many police departments love to spend vast quantities of taxpayer dollars for these gadgets in the name of "law enforcement". Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Law enforcement agencies are pretty much in an arms race with other police departments to see who has better toys and gadgets. If the tax payers of Boulder City don't mind paying for this, let them have it.
Neat toy. Too bad they deployed it in Mayberry RFD instead of someplace that could actually use it.
Rocco, I am plenty outraged, but I wasted all my energy on this story when it was first announced a few months ago. Some folks think, "I'm not a criminal, so why would it bother me?" which, for anyone who understands the history the United States, is not only a lazy and ignorant approach, it also undermines the cultural origins of our freedom-focused system. I'm not a criminal either, which is precisely WHY it bothers me.
Anyway, there are ways and means to shield your license plate from being read electronically, developed initially for those insulting "speed trap" traffic cameras. A little Googling goes a long way.
Metro needs this so does NLV ,so boulder City share with us I am sure it would cut down on the FOOLS driving around on city streets causing accidents and such because they cant drive or dont want to get legal .BOOKEM DANNO!
This is not surprising that it yeilded no arrests, because there is no money involved. If stolen cars and drug dealers paid fines Officer Gilliam and Boulder citys' Finest would be all over it. I think less time spend on issuing fines and more time trying to make the streets safer is the way to earn the trust of the citizens back. Oh yeah and maybe less civil compliants might help BCPD out!