OPP Licence Plate Recognition Project helps officers detect traffic offenders
Posted Mar 5, 2010 By EMC News
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Tweet ThisEMC News - The Ontario Provincial Police, Eastern Region, are now better able to detect crime and identify offenders on our roads and highways, thanks to a sophisticated licence plate recognition project launched in eastern Ontario.
OPP cruisers equipped with the new Automatic Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR) system have the ability to scan thousands of licence plates per day. This allows for the easy identification of stolen vehicles or those in violation of Criminal Code and Highway Traffic Act (HTA) laws.
ALPR is state-of-the-art technology that involves the use of a stationary camera mounted on a police vehicle. The system has outstanding image capture capability and the camera has the ability to scan licence plates whether the subject vehicle is moving, parked or even travelling at a high rate of speed.
Images are checked against a police and Ministry of Transportation (MTO) database "hotlist" of licence plates that are in poor standing such as those associated with stolen vehicles, plates that are suspended, reported stolen or missing and those with expired validation tags. The OPP's ALPR project consists of three fully marked OPP vehicles equipped with the latest ALPR and Mobile Workstation technology. One will be deployed in Ottawa, while the others are in the Toronto area and Northern Ontario.
QUICK FACTS
- The ALPR hotlist will enable the OPP to target an estimated five to seven million Ontario plates suspected of being in poor standing, and they will have Canada-wide access to stolen vehicle information.
- As of 1990, approximately 22 million licence plates are suspected of being in poor standing in Ontario.
- In optimum conditions, ALPR is capable of scanning approximately 7,000 plates per hour.
"The benefits of ALPR technology to policing have been measured and established around the world and with the support of our partners at the Ministry of Transportation, this will be an effective crime fighting tool that will further increase our visibility in traffic enforcement, improve compliance on our roads and highways and enhance our Provincial Traffic Safety Program," said Julian Fantino, OPP Commissioner.
"This technology is an incredible step forward and a tremendous tool. Officers will be alerted almost instantaneously when a vehicle, registered on the 'hotlist' is nearby," added Insp. Chris Lungstraas, Manager of Traffic & Marine, OPP Highway Safey Division, Eastern Region.
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