Police in San Fernando are using technology that allows them to find cars connected to crimes.
“There are cameras strategically placed in different areas of the city … so what these cameras do is they capture vehicles as they are passing through intersections,” Chief Fabian Valdez of San Fernando Police.
The technology allows police officers to find cars connected to crimes earlier this month the system helped police find a man who tried to kidnap and rape a 14-year-old girl at a bus stop on June 3.
“We have had multiple leads since this inception of this program back in April that have led to a number of arrests including arrests for attempted murder kidnapping,” Valdez said.
The system is a combination of digital photography and artificial intelligence.
“It takes the captured license plate and it runs it through different law enforcement databases to see if the vehicle is associated with a missing person to see if the vehicle has been used in a crime,” Valdez said.
Using a vehicle as an example, Valdez was able to get valuable information.
“If we do this you can see all the different areas where the camera has picked him up,” Valdez.
The system also sends real time data directly to every officer’s cell phones. These high-tech cameras are in use all across the Southland.
But some argue the system is an invasion of privacy. The American Civil Liberties Union has called flock cameras a mass surveillance system and urges citizens to inquire how long non-hit license plate data is retained.
Some states like New Hampshire require police officers to delete data from regular citizens not wanted in a crime within three minutes. Here in California, that data is stored for 30 days.