MENTOR, Ohio — The city of Mentor has put additional eyes on city streets by implementing automatic license plate reading cameras.
“We’ve actually recovered 17 stolen automobiles in Mentor, and I think we’ve arrested 41 persons with warrants,” Mentor Police Captian Robert Valley said.
He said all of this was made possible by the city’s 29 Flock cameras, which automatically read license plates. While these cameras have been controversial in some communities across the country, Valley said that’s not the case here in Mentor.
“The system’s been great,” Valley said. “The community enjoys it.”
Valley said these cameras are looking for things like warrants or missing people. The database then compares those plates to a national crime database.
“It’s reading tons,” he said. “It’s about 250,000 plates on average a day.”
Some question whether the new cameras are too much like “big brother” watching and question whether they could violate a person’s 4th amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.
“There are certainly public policy questions about, you know, how much of this technology we want to have,” said Bill Rich, who has been teaching constitutional law for over 40 years at the University of Akron. He said when you are driving on public roads, you don’t have an expectation of privacy.
“So, you know, when you drive your car with a license plate on it, which of course it’s going to, you are required to display a license plate and you’re driving on a public street,” Rich said. “Then the police are not violating your Fourth Amendment rights by observing the license plate or, for that matter, by recording it either with their cellphone cameras or with a camera that’s installed on a traffic light.”
Rich said he believes the topic provokes conversation, but he said he doesn’t believe the cameras violate any laws.
Valley said he’s happy to have this new tool to solve crimes.
“It will let us know on our computers, in our cars or our dispatchers,” Valley said. “[The system will] let us know that there’s a vehicle with a warrant. There’s a vehicle that’s stolen. It will tell the officers where that vehicle was, where it’s going, and then our officers will go look for it.”
Valley said the cameras have been so successful, the city has added more of them since last year.
“It’s doing a good job of of running plates and letting us know what’s out there,” he said.
