Frisco City Council members approved a $434,150 agreement with Flock Safety, the security software company behind the technology, to install 81 license plate-reading cameras during an Oct. 15 meeting.
Funding for the contract came from a grant from the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, according to meeting documents.
How it works
The cameras capture and catalog the license plates and descriptions of vehicles driving on the road in a database that police officers can access, according to Flock Safety’s website. The information is deleted after 30 days if it goes unused, according to an Oct. 1 council work session presentation.
The details
License plate recognition cameras are not new for Frisco. The Frisco Police Department has used a similar, mobile version of the system since 2012, Police Chief David Shilson said at the Oct. 1 council work session.
The city’s system uses static cameras that have to be positioned at a certain angle to read license plates, according to meeting documents. In comparison, Flock cameras can capture a moving vehicle’s license plate as well as its make, model and color, according to Flock Safety’s website.
Flock license plate cameras cannot capture who is driving a car, meaning it cannot use facial recognition, and will only know who a car is registered to, according to the Oct. 1 council work session presentation. The system also cannot be used for traffic enforcement and does not collect data on the speed the car is traveling.
Some communities use Flock Safety cameras as a private security camera network, something the company has faced legal action over in the past. Those issues do not apply to police use, Deputy Chief of Police Jason Jenkins said Oct. 1.
Zooming out
Nearby communities such as Prosper have had success using the same cameras.
Prosper Police Chief Doug Kowalski told Community Impact in September that the town’s network of around 50 Flock Safety cameras had been a “force multiplier” for the department. The camera system had alerted officers to 9,354 vehicles that could have been stolen or belonging to someone suspected of a crime in one year, he said.
Shilson said Oct. 1 that Frisco has struggled with stolen vehicles. Another benefit to the system is it will send out alerts to nearby officers if a car involved in a crime is nearby and picked up on camera, Jenkins said Oct. 1.
Going forward
Flock cameras will not replace other police technology, Jenkins said Oct. 1. One benefit of the new cameras is they will help cut down investigation times, he said.
“Part of the problem we're trying to address is basically it's helping us combat crime,” he said. “The population is growing, our visitors are growing. Our force can't grow to the magnitude that it needs to. We're always behind.”
The $434,150 contract was for a one-year agreement, which includes camera maintenance and support. Frisco officials will have the option to renew the agreement and adjust the number of cameras once it expires, according to meeting documents.
An 81-camera network can sound like a lot, but due to Frisco's size, there are some areas of the city that the cameras may not reach, Jenkins said. The plan is to ask for additional cameras annually, he said.
As of Oct. 17, locations for the cameras have not been determined. However, possible locations are expected to include higher-population areas around the city, such as malls, according to the Oct. 1 presentation.
"The world that we live in now, it's an innovative world where everything's got a digital footprint and there's so much technology out there that we have this available to us right in our grasp," Jenkins said. "We're hoping we'll go ... get it and just help our officers do their jobs a little bit more efficiently."
