Sheriff’s Office may get new crime-fighting tool

Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) should soon have a new public safety implement in its crime-fighting toolbox.
Called a license plate recognition (LPR) camera, this specialized kind of video surveillance camera is designed to capture license tags on fast-moving vehicles.
The idea is for the county to purchase 10 LPR cameras, which combined with the ones that business owners and private residents plan to purchase independently, should give local law enforcement a wide coverage of the county.
Sheriff Mac McNeill discussed the issue at the Jefferson County Commission meeting on Thursday evening, March 2, speaking at the invitation of Commissioner Austin Hosford, who had not long before attended a presentation on LPR cameras and said he planned to install one at his place of business.
McNeill offered that a system of such cameras, if placed strategically around the county, could well result in an overall reduction of crime, citing statistics of a 30 to 50-percent crime decrease in communities where such cameras were deployed.
He noted that in a small county such as Jefferson, the cameras could significantly reduce the number of hours that his investigators had to spend solving cases, based on the information that the cameras could provide.
In the event of a burglary or other crime, the timeframe could be narrowed to the hours of the incident and all vehicles in the vicinity during the specified hours could be identified, he said.
“We could go back and look at the time of a crime and get the tags of all the vehicles that went along the
all the vehicles that went along the route during those hours,” McNeill said.
The information associated with a particular license tag, moreover, would only be available to law-enforcement agencies, he said. The camera, he emphasized, would photograph only the license plate, which was no more than what could legally be done at present, if an individual had the time and wherewithal to do it.
“Right now, if I wanted, I could stand by the side of the road and take a picture of every car that goes by,” McNeill said, adding that the information gotten from the cameras would not be personal in nature.
He cited a case not long ago that he said, had the cameras then been in place, would have resulted in a quicker solution of the crime.
“We had a murder that we believe occurred in Tallahassee and they brought the body and dumped it in our county,” McNeill said. “It took us four or five weeks to solve this case. Had we had the cameras, we could have gone to the time of evening when the individual was dropped here and looked at the traffic and we may have had a suspect quicker.”
The cameras, he said, were all interlinked with other like cameras, so that the data would be available to all law-enforcement agencies.
“Right now we have seven private individuals who want to come in on their own and purchase cameras,” McNeill said. “And all these cameras would tie into everybody else’s on the same system, whether in Leon or Escambia counties or whereever. All the information is tied to the Sheriff’s Office, including amber or silver alerts. It’s great technology.”
Investigator Lt. Dan Williams added that within the last year or so, the JCSO had been able to recover a stolen vehicle, rescued an endangered elderly person and solved four thefts and shut down a thieves’ ring, thanks its LPR camera subscription.
“I think a total of 15-20 camaeras would put us in a good spot,” Williams said. “If we can get the cameras spaced out in our community and in the places that we think are going to be the most effective, it’s going to be a good return on our investment, based on what we’ve seen so far.”
McNeill told the commission that a subscription to the system would cost $2,500 annually per camera, with a $350 setup fee per unit. The annual charge, he said, covered everything, including a camera’s replacement in the event of a lightining strike, vandalism or if the technology changed.
The one caveat, he added, was that come April 1, the price would go up $500, to $3,000 per unit per year.
The commission was in favor of purchasing the cameras.
“You can’t put a price on safety,” said Commisisoner J. T. Surles. “Sooner or later, the word will get out, that hey, you don’t want to come to Monticello if you’re a bad guy. If it costs us 10 cameras to deter the bad guys, so be it. We know it’s always been easy for them to run here from Leon County and commit crimes.”
The way it was left, the JCSO is to submit a formal proposal for the purchases of the cameras and their total cost, with the commission set to take up the matter again at its Thursday evening meeting on March 16.