The City of Buffalo isn't just adding cameras to its technological arsenal for fighting crime. For the past year or so, you may have noticed that a few of the cars in the Buffalo Police Department (BPD) had what might appear to be cameras sitting on their trunks. You can tell from the picture with this post that they look like a camera or maybe a radar detector mounted on the back of a police car. According to Deputy Commissioner of Operations Daniel Derenda, they are not cameras. They are automated license plate scanners.
The way they work is they automatically scan license plates as the police car cruises along down a street. Once the license plate is scanned, it automatically gives feedback to the officer in the car. If the registration is invalid, if the insurance has lapsed, if the inspection is up, if the owner has warrants out, if the car is stolen, and a whole host of other information comes up on a monitor in the car - instantly.
“We have them on a few cars now and more coming,” says Derenda, “It picks up every car in its path.” Derenda explains that when the car is going down the street, it doesn’t just pick up cars in front of and on the sides of it. The scanners detect the cars parked on the street, in driveways, and in yards as well as the cars that drive past the officer. When an infraction is detected, the monitor blinks red and tells the officer why.
Derenda says this technology, which can read multiple license plates per seconds, is similar to the technology used in red-light cameras – another technology the city would like to see implemented. Derenda says at a demonstration in Chicago, when a car traveled through an intersection at 140mph, the camera took down the time, the speed, and had a crystal-clear image of the driver and license plate.
In one or two months, Derenda says more cars will be equipped with the scanners. The BPD has already sent officers to Albany to be trained and they have the funding from the Operation Impact Grant. The scanners would be used in the city on routine patrols. On a test run, they used the scanners at various checkpoints around the city. The scanners detected so many unregistered and uninsured cars that they were barely able to keep up with it. Derenda said that in 100 days, they impounded 1,000 cars.
“Sometimes it’s not the owner’s fault,” says Derenda. “They’ll get their license suspended and not know it. The other thing that happens often too is people will change insurance and not fill out the proper paperwork.” Overall though, Derenda says, “I think it’s a positive thing, I really do.”