Police Camera Reads Thousands of Plates In A Minute

by: John Shapiro, editor

First there was the cameras recording your every move at an intersection, providing untold millions of dollars in revenue. Now a special camera, hooked to a police cruiser can read license plates in seconds in parking lots and shopping centers!

Police in five Northeast Ohio counties will soon have this special surveillance equipment that can scan thousands of license plates in minutes, alerting officers to vehicles linked to crimes and unpaid fines and apparently a whole lot more.

And they'll be doing it, not from public roads and highways, but cruisin' through grocery store parking lots and shopping areas, by going up and down each and every lane searching like Arnold Schwartzenigger when he portrayed the Terminator scanning everything and anything as he looked for Sarah Conner.

By the end of August (2010), 42 fixed and mobile units will be deployed in Cuyahoga, Lorain, Lake, Geauga and Ashtabula Ohio counties. The total cost to buy and install the equipment is $580,260. It was paid for primarily with federal stimulus and Homeland Security money and an Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant.

The program is being spearheaded by Cleveland police and the city's Department of Public Safety.

The units, called Automated License Plate Readers, use high-speed cameras and computers to compare license plates to criminal databases. The system records the date, time and location of the license plate scanned. Police will store the information for 90 days. (gee only 90 days, really?)

Police will be alerted when a unit recognizes a license plate connected to a stolen car, an expired plate or drivers with warrants or unpaid fines. The system will also alert to vehicles linked to Amber Alerts.

All 42 units will be operating by late August 2010, said Erica Creech, spokeswoman for Cleveland's Office of Homeland Security, Grants & Technology.  There is currently one stationary unit at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and seven mobile units in Cleveland patrol cars.

Each sheriff in the five-county area and chiefs in several of the inner-ring suburbs have been offered one.

The company providing the systems is Elsag North America of Brewster, N.Y.

Elsag's website says that its equipment captures up to 3,600 plates per minute, day or night. The units identify plates on moving vehicles across four lanes of traffic and captures plates even when the police car is going more than 75 mph. The units recognize plates from all 50 states, Canada and Mexico.

Similar equipment was installed in 2004 on the Ohio Turnpike at the Pennsylvania and Indiana borders and given to troopers to identify stolen cars and motorists with warrants.

Is Big Brother - getting Bigger?

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