New Camera System Helps Find Stolen Cars

A fairly new piece of technology is aiding the stolen car task force, ACTION, by scanning license plates automatically and alerting officers to those reported stolen. 

Grosse Pointe Park Public Safety Director David Hiller said the system, called License Plate Reader, has been installed on one of the ACTION team's cars. Cameras are mounted on top and on the side of the vehicle. 

ACTION, or Arrest Car Thieves In Our Neighborhood, is a task force developed in 2007 to target car thieves after officers in the Pointes and other east side communities noticed a spike in the crime.

Since its inception, the team has recovered thousands of stolen vehicles, stopped repeat offenders, and otherwise stopped thieves trying to steal cars.

The License Plate Reader is an expensive system on loan from an insurance company, which Hiller would not name. The insurance company approached the team about this system hoping it could benefit both parties, Hiller said. 

Nationally, vehicle theft is falling, according to the FBI's uniform crime reports compiled through the middle of 2010. Much of that is credited to vehicles' increased security and sophisticated technology. 

Hiller said the License Plate Reader is one more tool to help lower the number.

The dual cameras scan license plates, and the numbers are compared to data about recently stolen cars from the National Crime Information Center database, Hiller said.

As it scans each license plate, it checks the national database and if the plate is listed as being from a stolen vehicle, and the camera takes a picture. The picture and information is then displayed on the laptop screen, Hiller said. 

The system allows officers to be on the move while looking for stolen vehicles and avoid having to stop to type in all of the information on their own system, saving a lot of time, Hiller said.

Although the License Plate Reader system is not necessarily used daily, it has had a positive impact, Hiller said. In the last three to four months, the team has recovered more than 100 stolen vehicles using it, he said. 

One day, while Hiller was riding along with the ACTION task force, they came across a car parked on a street just inside Detroit parked in front of a few vacant houses. The plates were scanned, and the police discovered it was a stolen car, he said. 

After doing additional investigation, the task force recovered four more stolen cars parked behind the vacant houses, he said. Five cars were recovered based on the one alert. 

ACTION is using the camera to target areas where stolen cars are commonly recovered, and a series of vacant homes is one popular location. The thieves steal a car, park it behind vacant homes, strip it, and leave without being noticed, he said. Eastland Mall parking lot is another location they target, he said. 

The team actually received the system last summer, he said, but it took some time to have it properly installed and rid it of glitches. The cameras are attached to a car that moves, so hitting a pot hole for example can throw it out of alignment, Hiller said. 

A professional installer was hired to complete the work and built in some cushion for such issues. It's been working well since, he said. 

License Plate Readers are being analyzed by the technology branch of the National Institute of Justice as they are being more widely used. According to a panel discussion in August 2010, the institute is looking at ways to ensure the system will be successful long-term. The technology is similar to that used in red-light cameras, which in many places has since been revoked after initially being installed and used, according to the institute.

Frank Scafidi, a spokesman for the National Insurance Crime Bureau, said the License Plate Readers are helping a great deal nationally. His nonprofit investigates property crime, including vehicle theft, nationally on behalf of more than 1,100 insurance companies.

"We see many examples of LPR (License Plate Reader) involved recoveries," Scafidi said, noting that the organization investigates hundreds of thefts annually at a minimum.

Police can also use the technology for other criminal investigations, such as kidnappings, to help find suspects, Scafidi said. The system can check thousands of plates in the same time it would take an officer to manually check about 100 plates, he said.

The key is it's only as good as the information loaded into the system is, Hiller said. A car reported stolen early in the morning won't have made it into the national database yet, meaning the camera works only for cars that were stolen more than 24 hours earlier, he said. 

In that case, "good old-fashioned police work still works," Hiller said.