Corman Park increases vehicle identification with AutoVU ALPR
Corman Park Police aims to protect and serve one of the largest rural municipalities surrounding Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. With two AutoVu ALPR systems on patrol cars, they have seen a dramatic increase in the number of identified vehicles.
The company
Corman Park is one of the largest rural municipalities surrounding Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The Corman Park Police aims to protect and serve its diverse community using the safest and most effective means possible. Its officers work 12-hour shifts, patrolling the community, responding to calls for service, and assisting the federal police in criminal offenses and apprehensions.
The challenge
John Garnet, Chief at Corman Park Police, knew that technology could help the officers become more efficient on their patrols. According to Garnet, “We were issuing a lot of speeding tickets, but our officers had no way of identifying unregistered vehicles, suspended drivers or wanted people unless they happened to pull them over for a traffic violation or noticed unusual behaviour. It was almost by chance.”
The solution
Increase in vehicle identification
“It used to be an 8:1 ratio of speeding tickets versus other infractions, and now, it’s the opposite,” said Garnet. These statistics helped to secure approval for the second ALPR system.
Enhanced officer effectiveness
“There’s no way in the world that an officer can read every plate driving towards him. Now, AutoVu does it for them. It’s checking every single plate that they pass,” said Garnet.
Vehicle identification in all conditions
Day or night, and during the winter months, the Corman Park Police rely on the ALPR system to identify wanted vehicles. Officers either park alongside roadways or drive around on routes.
Tracking results from the office
Chief Garnet uses the Security Center platform to investigate events within AutoVu. He also pulls reports to better understand the performance of the system.
“We are identifying an average of 130 unregistered vehicles and 50 suspended drivers per month. That’s a 400% increase over what we were doing before we had the AutoVu system.”
John Garnet, Police Chief, Corman Park Police
Results
After a successful one-day installation and quick user training by Genetec, officers were ready to hit the road. According to Garnet, “We started identifying a large number of unregistered vehicles, suspended drivers and people of interest. We were executing more warrants for suspects who have vehicles registered on the Canadian Police Information Center (CPIC) database.”
Today, the Corman Park Police has two patrol cars each equipped with a three-camera ALPR system. On each vehicle, two AutoVu SharpX cameras face forward and a third camera faces behind. As officers patrol their routes, the ALPR system automatically captures the license plates of vehicles coming from both directions. The system compares all plate reads to a national policing database, and alerts officers of offending vehicles.