Oak Lawn Village Board Approves Purchase Of 42 License Plate Readers

OAK LAWN, IL ? The Oak Lawn Village Board approved the purchase of 42 license plate readers for the police department at their meeting Tuesday evening. The motion-activated, solar-powered LPRs are designed to provide 24/7 monitoring of roadways, neighborhoods and business areas.

Village trustees approved an expenditure of $120,100 for a one-year contract, with a recurring cost of $109,500. The company that makes the plate readers ? Flock Safety ? claims its equipment will help municipalities reduce crime by 70 percent. The cameras will be hung at strategic areas throughout the village.

The data collected by the plate readers will be purged after 30 days, if not part of an active investigation. One purged, the data is gone. No fines or tickets will be associated with the technology.

?This is strictly an investigative tool, said Chief Dan Vittorio, of the Oak Lawn Police Department.

According to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, upwards of 70 percent of crime involves the use of a vehicle. Law enforcement can use license plate data to identify the registered owner, get an address, access potential witnesses, and at a minimum, get the first lead in an investigation.

Over the past several years, Oak Lawn has seen a rise in violent crime, including recent road rage shootings, a group of home invaders storming an elderly resident?s home, and an armed robbery of a jewelry store earlier this month on 95th Street, where an employee was shot.

?The readers take pictures of vehicles entering and leaving Oak Lawn,? Vittorio said. ?It will help us solve crimes. If we know the car's registration, that?s where we would start an investigation.?

Flock representative Dan Murdock explained how the data collected by the plate readers uses ?fingerprint technology? developed by the company. Murdock showed the village footage taken by demo readers placed along Cicero Avenue. Plugging in an eight-hour time period from earlier in the day, Murdock demonstrated how vehicles can be filtered by make, model and type within a matter of seconds. The plate readers can pick up such unique details as missing plates, covered plates, paper plates, roof racks, bumper stickers, and more.

The technology gathers information about how many times vehicles travel on roadways in a 30-day period. Within seconds, the plate readers narrow down 1200 vehicles to 20 vehicles within seconds.

?A lot of times with criminals, they?re not necessarily native to Oak Lawn,? Murdock said. ?If a vehicle is picked up 20 times in the last 30 days, he?s probably on his way to work. If you see a something one time, you probably want to look at it a little stronger if a crime happened.?

Flock technology is directly integrated with the FBI?s National Crime Information Center, which provides real-time alerts to dispatch and patrol officers on vehicle license plates associated with outstanding warrants, missing persons and stolen vehicles. Flock partners with Illinois State Police, which sends a daily list of stolen vehicles to law enforcement agencies on the flock system.

?The plate readers can make a hit on a car and withing 7 to 15 seconds, can send a text to the 911 dispatch center, or directly to the patrol car,? Murdock said. ?The stolen vehicle can be run out of town or make a traffic stop.?

The 42 license plate readers will be installed throughout the village, 14 of which are on IDOT property. Installation of LPRs on village-owned property will take place within the next three to five weeks. LPRs will have to wait to three to six months, as soon as the Illinois Department of Transportation approves the permits.

?Forty-three jurisdictions are waiting on IDOT permits as we speak,? Murdock said.

Oak Lawn police are trying to find private businesses, such as gas stations with light poles on their property close to IDOT roadways that may be willing to hang a plate reader on them, to start getting the network up and running as soon as possible. Cook County is currently revising policy on LPR installation on county roadways, and installation will have to wait until the new policy comes out.

The Oak Lawn plate readers will be integrated with other south suburbs, Will County and the I-55 corridor usinig the Flock technology. Once Oak Lawn?s is online, it will have the largest LPR system in Cook County.

Tr. Alex Olejniczak (Dist. 2) commended police and staff for being proactive in preventing crime before it happens.

?When I read police reports, a vast majority of things that happen in Oak Lawn are less than desirable,? Olejniczak said. ?They typically involve vehicles that are stolen and people coming into the village. I think it?s a great statement that if you?re a criminal coming to do crime in the Village of Oak Lawn, we will find you.?

The equipment is owned by Flock, but the data collected by the LPRs belongs to the Oak Lawn Police Department. The license plate readers are solar-powered, eliminating connection to the electrical grid. The company will also repair or replace LPRs at its own expense.

?I?ve been in discussion about this technology with some people who say it feels ?big brother-ish,?? Village Manager Tom Phelan said. ?Unfortunately we are now in a world where criminals are allowed to run free, it?s beyond maddening. The chief knows from this board not to worry about expense, especially violent crime.?

?This is one of those things where this technology can be abused, clearly it will be used if there is a bad guy and not to surveil the rest of us,? Phelan added.

Budgeted into the first-year contract are costs for IDOT permits, which run about $750 a piece. The plate readers will be paid for with equitable sharing funds, or drug money seized during arrests, so there is no cost to taxpayers.

?The question of privacy and security ? that bus left a long time ago, you?re on a camera all the time,? Mayor Terry Vorderer said. ?I think that?s why hoodies and masks are so popular.?