Local police might soon be able to tell if someone with a violent felony or stolen car drives onto Clark-Pleasant property.
The Clark-Pleasant school board approved the purchase of four Automatic License Plate Readers, or ALPRs. The ALPRs cost $2,500 each and the district will fund them with money from its 2018 voter-approved referendum, which uses an eight-year property tax hike of 10 cents for every $100 of assessed value for school safety and mental health initiatives.
A pair of ALPR cameras will be placed near roadways outside Whiteland Community High School and Clark-Pleasant Middle School, and will help investigators run license plates against local and national databases, said Chad Pryce, Clark-Pleasant police chief.
“With cameras roadside and at entrances to school properties, they will act as an early warning detection system,” Pryce said. “Specifically, school police departments would have the ability to flag potential safety threats to schools, or alert surrounding agencies about alerted vehicles in the area, specific vehicle descriptions and reason behind the alert.”
Specifically, the police would respond if the database shows a stolen vehicle or a vehicle that belongs to a violent felon or a suspect in a violent crime, he said.
The cameras come from Atlanta-based Flock Safety, and are used by the Greenwood Police Department and Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, Pryce said.
“Flock Safety’s mission is to eliminate crime, and this camera system allows police departments to take a step closer to achieving that,” he said.
The cameras scan license plates and allow investigators to search footage for vehicle type, make, color and any other unique details. Local police departments will then be alerted and can respond, Pryce said.
Once the cameras arrive, it will take six to eight weeks to install them, after which Clark-Pleasant officers will be trained on how to use them, he said.
