Government Technology - April 2008 - (Page 21)

“This is as plain and as obvious a use in policing as the two-way radio was 50 years ago. There’s just no way that this won’t be the future of policing. It’s just too exactly on point.” Charlie Beck, chief of detectives, Los Angeles Police Department One Space to Organize All Your Web Resources My Briefcase Dramatic Results “I’m still amazed by it,” said Mark Bateson, senior solution architect of the Sacramento Police Department, which has deployed two ALPR units. “In real time, the computer is evaluating live video from three cameras, and all the while — with every frame that goes by — it’s looking for a license plate.” PlateScan’s proprietary software is installed on the trunk-mounted computer, which is connected to several vehiclemounted cameras optimized for license plate recognition. The software can also be installed on an existing in-car laptop, and can often operate with an existing DVR camera. Every license plate is compared to a list of “vehicles of interest” associated with auto theft, felony warrants, parking violations or any other license plate-oriented databases — such as Amber Alerts — the police agency wishes to use. When the camera locates something similar to a license plate, it isolates that image and performs OCR on the plate. The data is immediately compared against a local database of stolen vehicles or other violations. If there’s a match, the ALPR notifies the officer in a computer-generated voice. The officer’s laptop or MDT screen shows a picture of the plate, the vehicle and the reason for the hit. The officer can then contact dispatch to make sure the information is correct. The systems can sometimes be fooled by wording on the sides of vehicles and are affected by dirt on a license plate and other obstructions. But it’s a far cry from an officer manually typing in a few dozen plate numbers during a shift, waiting for a hit. An ALPR system can run thousands of license plates during a typical shift — it’s a breakthrough for understaffed police departments. “The systems that get used regularly recover four to five times the number of vehicles an officer would recover,” said Charlie Beck, chief of detectives and commanding officer of the Detective Bureau at the Los Angeles Police Department, which has 12 vehicles equipped with ALPR systems. “A good, efficient running system is the difference between fishing with a line and fishing with a net — it’s that dramatic.” ALPR systems are relatively new with few in use, so concrete statistics aren’t available that point to an increase in stolen-vehicle convictions. But in Los Angeles, officers running an ALPR sometimes get two or three hits in a shift, whereas they’d previously get that many in a month. “The issue is, we have a limited number of [systems],” Beck said. “We have a dozen, but we run 1,500 black-and-whites. It’s really a drop in the bucket, but it will change the way we do things.” The Pennsylvania Auto Theft Prevention Authority was created in 1996 to combat a runaway auto theft problem. Thefts have dropped from 53,000 in 1996 to 28,000 in 2007. Pennsylvania equipped 13 squad cars with license plate readers, and with the hope of continuing that decline in stolen vehicles, began using the technology in earnest in 2007. Track News & Hot Topics Store Videos & Resources Bookmark Whitepapers & Articles Save External URLs/RSS Feeds Take Our Tutorial Today! /briefcase/tour Sponsored by: Confidence in a connected world. 21 http://www.govtech.com/briefcase/tour http://www.govtech.com/briefcase/tour http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - April 2008

Government Technology - April 2008 Contents Point of View Big Picture The Last Mile On the Scene Four Questions for... Freeze Frame How Safe Is Your Data? Easy Street Gadget Overload Indiana Overhaul First Person: A Better Bill Data Defense Strength in Numbers Public Storage Products Two Cents Spectrum Personal Computing signal:noise

Government Technology - April 2008

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