Greater Sudbury Police have installed automated licence plate readers at 16 fixed locations throughout the municipality to continually monitor for specific plates.
Officers input specific licence plates to be monitored and receive a notice of time, location and direction of travel by email as soon as one of the plates inputted is photographed.
Greater Sudbury Police Service announced the automated licence plate readers in a media release issued this week, and Sudbury.com followed up with spokesperson Kaitlyn Dunn for additional information.
Police input licence plates of interest into a database, “and when that vehicle of interest passes through one of those 16 locations, the officer who put that information to the system receives an email notification of the date, time, location and direction of travel of that vehicle,” Dunn said.
“It is immediate if it’s something that’s active or ongoing.”
This automatic notification can be pushed to more than one officer.
Licence plates of interest could be associated with such things as “stolen vehicles or vehicles associated with missing persons, Amber Alerts, human and weapons trafficking and organized crime and vehicles involved in active and ongoing criminal investigations,” according to the GSPS media release.
These stationary cameras have been strategically placed in high-traffic areas throughout Greater Sudbury, with the majority within the city of Sudbury.
Only targeted licence plates will be scanned for, and in keeping with Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act rules, the devices’ high-resolution cameras are pointed downward and do not capture images of the people within the vehicles.
The system will automatically purge images of licence plates not designated as a plate of interest every seven days.
The following is a map of the 16 locations:
Although similar to the 31 automated licence plate readers already in use throughout Greater Sudbury Police Service’s fleet of 43 vehicles, the in-vehicle and fixed readers scan plates differently.
The in-vehicle cameras automatically scan licence plates in the vicinity of police vehicles, and link to a Ministry of Transportation database to automatically alert police to such things as unregistered and stolen vehicles. They also flag vehicles whose plates are registered to people under a warrant for arrest.
The fixed location readers, meanwhile, only scan those specific licence plates which police input. That said, police can also input individual licence plates into their in-car system to assist with active investigations.
By the time police issued this week’s media release, stationary automated licence plate readers were already active at 16 locations in Greater Sudbury.
The total cost of the 16 cameras was $151,795, of which the province funded $87,160 and GSPS covered the $64,635 balance.
“As the largest municipality in Northern Ontario, Greater Sudbury is viewed as the gateway to the North for organized crime,” according to the GSPS media release. “Having (automated licence plate readers) monitoring these intelligence-informed locations will assist police to identify suspicious patterns, develop intelligence on the movement of vehicles involved, as well as conduct proactive targeting of offenders. “
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.