Springfield, Ill., Considers License Plate Reader Technology

(TNS) — The full Springfield City Council likely will take up a vote today finalizing a two-year contract with a company that would install license plate readers (LPRs) sometime early next year.

Springfield Police Chief Kenny Winslow sees the technology from Atlanta-based Flock Safety as "a crime reduction tool." Winslow was at last Tuesday's committee of the whole meeting when the presentation was made.

The city would pay $415,000 for the installation and maintenance of 83 cameras around the city, including, Winslow said, major "chokepoints."

The city would own the data generated by the cameras, said Dan Murdock, a Flock representative from the Chicago area who made an initial presentation to the city council in late July. The data would be stored for 30 days in the cloud before it is purged, he added.

If adopted, Springfield Police could share data information with other police departments that have the same technology. There are now 64 law enforcement agencies in the state employing Flock, Murdock said, including Peoria, Champaign and Decatur.

"What Flock did was build a glorified trail camera," Murdock said at Tuesday's presentation. "Anytime something moves, (the camera) takes a bunch of pictures. Then machine learning runs over the top of it to identify the make, color and type of vehicle as well as the license plate."

If there was a shooting or robbery and a witness told police he or she saw a red F-150 driving away from the scene, Murdock added, authorities would be able to go back to cameras in the area and search for all the red Ford trucks to the license plate particular to that time frame.

Winslow said a lot of times officers can get directed to within a few feet of the scene of a crime, especially with ShotSpotter, only to get a partial vehicle description from witnesses.

"We have nothing more to go on and we spend days and days and days trying to track that down," Winslow said. "We see this being an important tool to our overall crime reduction program and will be a valuable tool as far as identifying those suspect vehicles as well as getting that information out to our officers and surrounding agencies."

Winslow said the technology "absolutely would have been 100% helpful" in an Aug. 13 incident when a former Springfield news reporter was struck and her dog killed while crossing Fayette Avenue at MacArthur Boulevard. The driver of a late model white SUV stopped momentarily, then sped off. No arrests have been made.

The cameras, Winslow added, "would have been in the area" of the 2500 block of South 10th Street, the scene of an Aug. 9 triple homicide.

Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder said it has the potential to be instrumental with identifying vehicles that flee crime scenes.

"You try to apprehend them as quickly as possible, but in cases where they're speeding off, you don't want to endanger the public, so from that standpoint it gives the police another tool in resolving the crime," Langfelder said. "It's worth the investment."

All of the major areas of the city would be covered, Winslow said. Cameras could be moved or added, but in both of those cases, they come with costs.

Winslow said he envisioned public education campaigns showing the public how the cameras would work and how the data would be used.

"We have had some conversations with some local stakeholders, some civic organizations (about the LPRs)," Winslow said. "We have to be transparent about what the data would be used for."

Police could also get images if any business or homeowners association purchases the technology.

Murdock said a little more than half of Flock's sales are to private businesses.

If the resolution passes, Flock would install the cameras by the end of the city's fiscal year at the end of February, then it would be built into the 2022 and 2023 budget cycles.

Springfield city council members were generally behind the plan though there was some question if American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds could be used to finance it.

"It's something outside the box that we've never tried before," said Ward 9 Ald. Jim Donelan.

Ward 2 Ald. Shawn Gregory said he had reservations about the implementation, but the presentation and Winslow's input swayed him.

"Chief has thought about all of the city and the chokepoints, so I support this," Gregory said.

Ward 1 Ald. Chuck Redpath said Flock is "an important crime investigation tool we really need," but he opposed using ARP money because it was going to be an ongoing contract the city is going to have to build into its budget.

Taylor home on debate agenda

The preservation of a piece of Black history in Springfield will be before the city council today.

Leadership from The Springfield Project had sought $217,720 in funds from the Far East Tax Increment Financing District (TIF) to stabilize the foundation of the John Wickliffe Taylor Home at 12th and Cass streets.

The 20-room Federal style building built by a Springfield judge and minister from the mid 1800s was later home to the Ambidexter Institute, a Tuskegee model school in the early 1900s that trained Black children in math, science and the trades.

Council members balked at the notion mainly because there has been a policy that TIF funds not exceed one-third of the cost of the development.

Dominic Watson, who oversees both the Black Chamber of Commerce and The Springfield Project, said an estimate of the total cost of the redevelopment project is around $1.5 million. The figure from R.D. Lawrence Construction, Inc. wasn't seen by council members Tuesday and falls well under the one-third policy.

The home is in dire straits structurally and has been vacant for nearly two decades, Watson said.

"We're trying to do right by a property that has a huge historic value to the Black community," Watson said, "and we want to do that in a timely fashion because I feel like we waited for a long time to get to this point and so it's important to execute while we have the attention of the city."

Watson said he wants to honor "the legacy of the property" and mix tourism with the opportunity to incorporate STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programing out of the site.

One partner that has shown interest in the Taylor Home, Watson said, is Route History, a museum and visitors center at 737 E. Cook St. which in part highlights stories around the Black experience on historic Route 66.

© 2021 The State Journal-Register, Springfield, Ill. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Comments are closed.