Licence plate scanner ‘useful’: Cops

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This article was published 06/10/2012 (4853 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

City police have made good use of an effective, albeit controversial, piece of equipment.

Since its arrival earlier this year, the Brandon Police Service has used its licence plate scanner to check tens of thousands of plates.

“I would say it’s useful … It can read and analyze plates a lot faster than a human eye can,” says BPS traffic section supervisor, Sgt. Kevin Loewen.

The force has one Automated Licence Plate Recognition unit installed in one of its marked police vehicles.

It’s a lot quicker than the traditional method of checking plates, which was to either run them manually through a cruiser’s computer or relay them to dispatch to run a check.

The scanner was introduced in May and, as of about a week ago, it had scanned the plates of more than 40,000 vehicles.

That has resulted in 110 charges laid or tickets written for such offences as unlicensed driving, unregistered vehicles and suspended and prohibited driving.

The unit’s cameras are capable of scanning the licence plates of moving vehicles, whether the police car itself is parked or moving.

The plate number is then automatically checked via computer against databases such as the Canadian Police Information Centre and the motor vehicle branch computer.

That supplies officers with information such as whether the vehicle has been stolen, or if it’s registered and whether the registered owner has a valid licence.

It can also show whether the registered owner is wanted on a warrant.

The reader doesn’t always get the plate number right, Loewen acknowledges, and the relevant information is verified with a dispatcher.

The scanner can also be programmed to watch for certain plate numbers — such as those that belong to stolen vehicles.

The information linked to the plate can also be checked with the databases of out-of-province licensing bureaus.

An example of how police use the plate reader was detailed in court this week.

One 29-year-old woman was fined after getting caught driving while disqualified.

On Aug. 2, she was driving her vehicle along 18th Street when the licence plate reader scanned her plate.

The device notified the officer that the car may be being driven by an unlicenced driver and police confirmed on CPIC that the registered owner was prohibited from driving.

Police pulled her over on the 1100-block of 18th Street and the driver, the owner of the vehicle, mistakenly claimed that she’d had her licence reinstated following a conviction for impaired driving.

Police sent her on her way with a promise that she’d later provide the documents as proof of reinstatement.

But officers later confirmed with Manitoba Public Insurance that the woman was suspended and her licence hadn’t been reinstated.

She failed to provide proof to the contrary and on Monday, after she explained to a judge she’d been mistaken about the length of her driving ban, she was fined $500.

However, while effective, the technology has its critics.

A great deal of the criticism comes from Victoria, where it was learned that much of the scanner data there was being saved and stored for reasons that weren’t clear.

That lead to accusations that police were using the scanners to unnecessarily track citizens and their personal information.

Earlier this year, B.C.’s privacy commissioner launched an investigation into whether police are complying with privacy laws.

In Manitoba, in August, the province’s acting ombudsman said he’d look into how police officers are using the cameras.

He argued that, if police are keeping information such as licence plate numbers in a database, then by law it needs to be available to people to see what information is being collected.

Loewen acknowledges that licence plate numbers are stored, at least temporarily, so they can be checked, but says officers aren’t keeping a log or database of numbers to track vehicles.

The suggestion that the cameras are being used to covertly track the movements of citizens is “ridiculous,” he said.

“We have work to do, we don’t have time to waste with that crap,” Loewen said. “We are not storing the data, we have absolutely no use for the data.”

He said police are only concerned about the scanner’s alerts to possible offending.

“If you’re out there doing something wrong, and you’re detected by the police doing something wrong, then you get what you deserve.”

Loewen added that the scanner helps to keep radio airwaves clear for serious calls, as officers don’t have to fill air time with calls to the dispatcher to run licence plates.

» ihitchen@brandonsun.com