Agency Locates Two Wanted Vehicles in One Day With LPRs
October 12, 2023 by Lexi Belvis
Located in far western Kentucky just across the Illinois state line, Paducah-McCracken County is intersected by the heavily trafficked Interstate Highway 24. With the added daytime influx from commuters and shoppers, the county seat uses the road traffic to their advantage, by implementing automatic license plate readers (LPRs) that scan for wanted vehicles and persons.
"We recently acquired LPRs that hang over two of our busiest intersections and constantly scan for stolen vehicles, stolen license plates, missing persons, wanted persons, and felony vehicles," Kim Clark, Emergency Communications Manager with the Paducah Police Department, said. "Whenever our camera catches a wanted vehicle, we get an alert."
With the LPRs and the ability to create custom call types and custom addresses in Tyler's Enterprise CAD solution, the Paducah PD developed a new process for combating crime in their community efficiently and effectively.
"We created a custom call type in Enterprise CAD called 'LPR' that allows us to track any traffic related to license plate reader activity,” Clark said. “Then, we created custom addresses that correspond to these cameras, which we named 'LPR1' and 'LPR2.' When we get a hit on one of our cameras, we can enter a call for service in seconds, designate LPR as the call type, enter 'LPR1' or 'LPR2' as the location based on which camera it passed, and get someone dispatched quickly.
"Within the first week of having our system in place, we got two hits on the same day: one on a stolen vehicle, and one on a vehicle that was involved in a felony theft in Missouri. A local agency had entered these vehicles in the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. When the vehicles passed by our LPRs, we were notified immediately.”
Clark continued, “We used Enterprise Fire Field Mobile and the automatic vehicle location (AVL) on the officer's vehicles, checked our real-time map in CAD to see who’s in the area to dispatch, and got responders on their way. We were also able to notify other officers in the area to be on the lookout. Because of this technology, we were able to locate and recover both vehicles."
The agency credits the LPR and CAD technologies with improving safety for their first responders and the broader community.
"The combination of LPRs and Enterprise CAD allows us to have a rapid response to what can be a very dangerous situation, which often ends in a felony stop and recovery,” Clark said. “We've been more successful in utilizing this new technology because of ways we were able to incorporate it into the technology we're most comfortable with, which is Enterprise CAD."
Looking for a customizable CAD system to fit your agency’s specific needs? Learn more about Tyler Technologies’ Enterprise CAD, Enterprise Fire Field Mobile, and the full suite of Enterprise Public Safety solutions.