New cruiser with licence plate recognition software on Regional roads this week
Posted Oct 5, 2017 06:13:12 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Regional Police have a new cruiser in their fleet that’ll it make it easier to nab illegal drivers.
The vehicle is equipped with license plate reader technology, and is capable of detecting licence plates of passing vehicles, captured by a series of cameras mounted on the rooftop.
Police Chief Bryan Larkin says the plate numbers are then compared against a ‘hotlist’ of known licence plates, including stolen or expired plates, those registered to wanted or missing persons, prohibited drivers, or vehicles associated with Amber Alerts.
A police spokesperson says the cruiser could be on the road as early as today, as the Police Services Board got an update on the pilot project at their monthly meeting, Wednesday.
While an officer can run about 150 plates in a normal shift, Larkin says that same officer can check between 3,000 and 5,000 plates in a single shift with the technology.
“It’s making the officer’s job easier, more effective, more efficient, and quite frankly, it’s artificial intelligence,” he says.
The hot list is prepared and updated daily by MTO or OPP.
While the use of the technology has raised privacy concerns, Larkin says licence plate information will be deleted immediately if it doesn’t show up in the database.
The cost of the vehicle was covered by a provincial grant of just under $30,000, while another $30,000 to access the database was shared with other police services, according to Larkin.
