6 license plate recognition cameras to be placed at Monroe County high traffic spots
Six cameras that can recognize license plate numbers will be installed at various high-traffic locations in Monroe County.
The $16,500 agreement with the Flock Group was approved by county commissioners at their regular Wednesday meeting.
According to the sheriff’s office, the ability to have access to information about the license plate numbers of vehicles that have driven past certain locations will help with response to emergencies like Amber Alerts.
According to Flock’s website, its cameras can identify license plates on vehicles traveling up to 100 miles per hour and up to 75 feet away, even at night.
Based on the description of the camera system that county attorney Jeff Cockerill gave to commissioners on Wednesday, the county government would not wind up having lists of license plate numbers that have driven past the cameras. That means no such list would exist that would be maintained and subject to disclosure under Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act.
Cockerill described how a license plate number from an Amber Alert would be entered into the system, and the sheriff’s office would be alerted if the vehicle with that license plate drives past the location.
On a different scenario, if the sheriff’s office had a license plate number that was associated with one of its cases, the number could be entered into the system to determine whether that vehicle had been in the area recently.
As far as the security of the information that is maintained by Flock, according to Flock, the camera footage is by default automatically deleted every 30 days on a rolling basis.
According to Flock, its data is stored in the cloud through Amazon Web Services (AWS) using AES256 bit encryption.
Cockerill said that the locations for the cameras have not yet been determined, but they can be repositioned after initial installation. Cockerill said the county has talked to INDOT about installing cameras along INDOT road right-of-way. The focus, Cockerill said, is on locations with a high traffic volume.
