Imperial County now using license plate readers to fight crime

The city of El Centro has new technology that may help save some time when it comes to fighting crime.

Our news team caught up with the El Centro Police Department to learn more about these license plate readers and how they are being used.

“This is a force multiplier, it allows us to monitor certain locations and determine what criminal activity if any is occurring within those locations and then respond to it accordingly,” said Commander Robert Sawyer, El Centro Police Dept.

Police tell us this new technology will not be taking any video, what is simply does is capture pictures of a license plate.

“The license plate reader program is part of a regional project that we are working on currently here in Imperial County. For the city of El Centro what it currently does is it captures a photograph of the real license plate of the vehicle as it passes through the intersection,” explained Sawyer.

The photograph is then converted to a text file and compared against a database of vehicles associated with criminal activity. This program may be new to Imperial Valley, but has existed at a national level for quite some time.

“License plate readers have been able to put a vehicle in a specific location and then law enforcement been able to start searching that particular area or that general area to be able to find the vehicles. And that’s helped out in a number of homicide cases; it’s helped out in a number of kidnapping cases, sexual predator cases, things of that nature,” added Sawyer.

License plate readers are also useful when it comes to stolen vehicles. Several intersections have the new technology installed and authorities tell us the program may gain more equipment in the months to come.

“It’s really about public safety; our major concern is to be able to go out and safeguard the lives of our citizens within our community and to provide them a better service with a limited amount of resources,” said Sawyer.