HOUSTON – In an effort to combat crime, a Houston city council member says license plate readers will be installed throughout his district.
City Council Member Edward Pollard, who represents District J in southwest Houston, held a news conference Thursday morning to address the new initiative. Pollard was joined by Houston Police Department command staff, the Police Officer’s Union, and management districts, as he announced a plan to start using Flock License Plate Reader (LPR) cameras.
Pollard allocated funds to HPD for the cameras and said different partnerships will help fulfill the goal of installing 100 new cameras within the district.
Map of Houston City Council District J
“We want to send a strong message to criminals that all eyes are on you,” said Pollard. “We are going to use every resource at our disposal to make sure residents and visitors [in] our great city feel safe and can work, live and play without threat to their property or their lives.”
The cameras will be able to capture still images to help identify a vehicle’s make, color, license plate, and other unique details. They are not able to record or stream live videos, per Pollard’s news release.
The cameras could be installed within the next 60 days.
Memorial Villages Police Chief Ray Schultz said his department has been using the Flock camera system for four years and now have 11 readers.
It’s actually matching vehicles and license plates against the database in the cloud to see what’s associated with the crime,” Chief Schultz said.
The chief said it been a great crime deterrent and law enforcement tool.
“It’s been a great tool for us we’ve been able to recover a lot of stolen vehicles and with that capture some criminals that usually have felony warrants, drugs, weapons,” Schultz added. “If we have a hit and run or something like that we have a partial plate or something like that we can check that data base and see if it was here at that time. It gives us a point to start for our investigations.”
Officer Katie Wilson with West University Place Police Department said they use a similar system, except their’ s records surveillance footage too.
“It’s a great solvability feature for our agency and catching bad guys and holding them accountable for their criminal activity that they have done within our city.”
Wilson said 3 of their 40 license plate readers are up and running and has given their department a 97.2% accuracy rate.
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