Coldwater leases police license plate cameras after privacy questions answered

Don Reid, Coldwater Daily Reporter
·3 min read

COLDWATER — The city will lease four Flock Safety automated license plate readers for two years.

Public Safety Director Joe Scheid told the city council Monday night they will be used “as a tool for solving crimes, arresting wanted felons, and locating missing or endangered children."

Coldwater becomes one of 80 municipalities in Michigan using the nationwide system after the four hard-wired cameras are installed.

Flock Safety license plate reading cameras are set up to scan all vehicles passing on a road.
Flock Safety license plate reading cameras are set up to scan all vehicles passing on a road.

The cameras scan every license plate that passes 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The computer system records all vehicles and identifies license plates that pass the cameras.

The computer notifies central dispatch when a “hot list” entered plate passes the camera.

Those include Amber alerts, stolen vehicles, and plates tied to wanted criminals and previous crimes.

Scheid said the recorded information is treated as Law Enforcement Information Network – LEIN – information and cannot be obtained by the public under Freedom of Information Act requests.

City Manager Keith Baker said the city included the first-year cost of $15,800 in the current budget. The second-year lease is $13,200, for a total price of $29,000.

As leased equipment, the city is not stuck as technology advances. 

Councilman Chad Johnson, a member of the state’s fugitive recovery team with the Michigan Department of Corrections, called the system “a great program” that he has used.

Scheid did not determine final locations but said the eastside commercial area around the I-69 interchange is likely.

Director Joe Scheid
Director Joe Scheid

Because Coldwater established a minimum record retention of one year, the lease will contract for 366 days of recording storage for an additional $1,200.

A policy on use requires the police department regularly audit the system to determine all searches “are linked to legitimate purposes,” Scheid said.

Scheid wants the department to routinely check the Automated License Plate Recognition database for investigative leads for vehicles when there are homicides, robberies, sexual assaults, breaking and enterings, vehicle thefts, and hit-and-run traffic crashes involving serious injury or death.

Councilman Jim Knaack emphasized “these are not speed cameras” used to write speeding tickets.

The police policy also states, “vehicles or their plates shall not be entered into the Hot List for minor violations such as civil infractions, license plate violations, insurance violations, driver’s license violations, misdemeanor warrants, civil process, or driving complaints called in to 911 by the public.”

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Scheid said an armed robbery of a Coldwater cellphone store three years ago was solved and prosecuted by federal authorities after ALPR cameras at I-69 and the I-80/90 toll road identified suspect vehicles.

The director also said during a series of catalytic convert thefts at local businesses last year, the APLR could have helped.

“When the ALPR scanned a suspect plate, it would have provided us with an alert that the suspect was in the area. We could then respond in force to the local car dealerships and repair shops that were being targeted and possibly stopped the crime in progress," he said.

---Contact Don Reid: dReid@Gannett.com. 

This article originally appeared on Coldwater Daily Reporter: Coldwater leases police license plate cameras