GR city buys high-tech plate readers

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - Grand Rapids city leaders voted to buy four high-tech license plate reader systems for the police department.

In July, 24 Hour News 8 reported the systems were still in the evaluation phase.

The dual cameras, mounted on the trunk lid of police cruisers, read license plates as the officer drives down a street and feeds those plates into a computer that flags scofflaws and plates tied to crime and drivers wanted on warrant.

A beep lets the officer know if the computer has picked up a a hit.

Part of the city's ongoing transformation process, commissioners approved the $104,000 price tag for four systems.

While improving officer safety and efficiency, the biggest advantage may be for taxpayers.

Scofflaws -- the people who fail to pay parking tickets -- add up to millions of dollars in lost revenue to the city.

Right now, crews from the city's parking enforcement team and police officers have to stop at a particular car and manually check the license number to find out if it's tied to unpaid tickets.

Most GRPD officers run between 50 and 100 plates on a given shift.

The cameras can read up to 5,000 plates per shift.

Officials with the police department figure the cameras could help collect over $114,000 in outstanding tickets in the first year alone, paying for the systems and having some money left over.

But what about privacy?

Mayor George Heartwell asked if the system may draw court challenges claiming they violate personal privacy.

GRPD Sgt. Geoff Collard said the cameras are scanning plates on streets and other public rights-of-way. Collard said if there's reasonable suspicion that a driver tied to the car is involved in criminal activity, an officer would need to take the same steps to establish reasonable cause as they would in any investigation.

One major concern among privacy advocates is what's done with the information once it's captured and put in the data base.

Collard said some departments have filed the information away indefinitely. Detectives could use the data in the system to tied a plate to a crime.

But that leaves the plates of a lot of innocent people in the system.

Collard said that's been a concern inside GRPD as well. Right now the plan is to hold the information for no more than one year.