Lowell police credit license plate readers for arrests
LOWELL, Mich. (WOOD) — The Lowell Police Department is crediting its new license plate readers with leading to two arrests following a chase across three West Michigan counties.
Sgt. Gordy Lauren said in just six months the system is making an impact.
On April 10, Lowell police received an alert that a car stolen from Lansing was in the city.
“We attempted to stop the car. The car fled and we pursued it through Ionia County, Montcalm County, back into Kent County all the way to Rockford,” Lauren said.
Police say the vehicle hit two police cars and officers found methamphetamine. A man and a woman were arrested.
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“It’s called an LPR, license plate reader camera. Currently, we have four in the city of Lowell on each of the major entry points to the city,” Lauren said.
The cameras are positioned to see the back of a vehicle.
The plate is run through the National Crime Information Center database. If they get a match, police are notified within seconds.
“Anything that’s put into that system like missing persons, stolen vehicles, stolen property, felony warrants, anything that’s connected in that system to a plate,” Lauren explained. “We do get hits frequently. We are connected with the other departments in Kent County that have these so we are notified when they have other plates or cars that are stolen and same with them. They can obtain our information through our system as well.”
Lauren said the system only keeps the plate reader information collected for 30 days and the department has addressed privacy concerns.
“They are cameras. They only read the license plates though. There’s no facial recognition. You literally have to drive by the camera for the plate to be read. It will not take a picture of like, the driver of the car or anything like that. If somebody walks in front of a camera it doesn’t take a picture,” Lauren said.
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The cameras cost about $3,000 per camera per year for a subscription that includes all the equipment and maintenance.
“For a small department it’s fairly expensive. We did sit down with the city council and the downtown development authority. We have four cameras and three of the cameras are in the downtown area so the downtown development is paying for three of the cameras and then the City of Lowell is paying for one,” Lauren said.
He said the readers help a smaller department like Lowell make a bigger impact and hopes to expand their use.
“If we can find that money through grants or other ways, I think we definitely would be getting more cameras in the future,” Lauren said.
*Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the cost of the cameras. They are about $3,000 per camera per year. We regret the error, which has been fixed.
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