City of Hemet Police Officers Have a New
Tool to Combat Crime.
On July 02, 2013 the City of Hemet Police Department deployed their first police vehicles equipped with automated license plate readers (ALPR). The City of Hemet Police Department was able to fund the readers through grants and although the system is still in its infancy, one stolen vehicle has already been recovered thanks to the system.
The ALPRs are attached to police vehicles and passively scan license plates as the officer handles his or her calls for service. If the system locates a “hit” such as a stolen vehicle or a missing person vehicle, it will notify the officer and tell him or her, what kind of vehicle it found and what the vehicle looks like. The officer will begin searching for the vehicle and take the appropriate action.
The most common use for this kind of technology is to locate stolen vehicles however; it will “hit” on any information programmed into it. For example, if officers were investigating a kidnapping case and had some suspect vehicle information, the system could be programmed to search for matching vehicles and would then alert the officers if it finds a match.
The best thing about the technology is that it does not require active input from the officers. The officers are free to handle their calls as normal; the system just adds several extra sets of eyes to each vehicle. Each vehicle equipped with the ALPR system scans about one thousand license plates each shift the officer works.
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