ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. (WDRB) – Hardin County officials are adding local public schools to a growing list of places under surveillance by license plate cameras.
Law enforcement leaders announced the camera plan for a select number of schools on Monday during a briefing with reporters to tout the technology’s use in the county about 45 minutes south of Louisville.
In a two-year trial, 20 Flock Safety cameras will be mounted near the schools, Hardin County Schools Superintendent Teresa Morgan said. The cameras’ cost – about $50,000 per year – will be covered by grants and general budget funds, she said.
“The school district is sponsoring the cameras, but it will be the business of the police officers to protect and utilize the data from those cameras,” Morgan said.
Often attached to streetlights and elevated street signs, the devices take snapshots of license plates while also capturing identifying features – from bumper stickers to roof racks and even items and people inside passing cars.
Police departments across the U.S. are adding cameras as a way to quickly locate stolen vehicles or those suspected in crimes. But the technology’s rapid growth has alarmed civil libertarians and privacy advocates, prompting legislation in Kentucky and elsewhere to create uniform data retention policies.
Morgan called the cameras near Hardin County schools a “proactive measure for the safety of our schools” and said the devices will be placed to provide views of vehicles entering school grounds and could be used, for example, to help alert police if a registered sex offender comes onto campus.
Morgan declined to say where the cameras will be located. It wasn’t immediately known when the devices will be added.
Hardin County’s largest city, Elizabethtown, also is adding 10 more Flock cameras to an initiative it began last winter, Elizabethtown Police Chief Jeremy Thompson said. The city now has 20.
Radcliff Police Chief Jeff Cross speaks January 22, 2014 in Elizabethtown, flanked (from left to right) by Hardin County Schools Superintendent Teresa Morgan; Elizabethtown Police Chief Jeremy Thompson; Flock spokeswoman Holly Beilin; and Hardin County Sheriff John Ward (WDRB photo).
Thompson said the cameras began reaping benefits shortly after they were installed: It took nine minutes after putting a camera at the busy intersection of Ring Road and Dixie Highway to recover a stolen car.
Elizabethtown police since have found nearly 20 stolen vehicles using the Flock cameras and used them to locate kidnapped children and missing people, Thompson said, as well as aiding in 175 criminal investigations.
In nearby Radcliff, police recently started installing cameras and plan to add several more, Chief Jeff Cross said.
“I look at it as putting a whole lot more cops on the street than what we can actually put out there in bodies,” he said.
A bill filed this month in the Kentucky General Assembly says law enforcement agencies, local governments and homeowners’ associations couldn’t keep license plate data for longer than 30 days unless it’s being used in a felony prosecution or is subject to a subpoena.
Flock automatically deletes data after 30 days unless images have been downloaded for an investigation, at which point a police department’s own policies govern how to proceed, Flock spokeswoman Holly Beilin said.
Thompson, the Elizabethtown chief, said the state legislation wouldn’t affect how his department handles the Flock data.
“I have not seen anything that would change how the Elizabethtown police department would do business, or, quite frankly, any of our Flock partners,” he said.
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