County Accepts Grant for Automatic License Plate Readers

Fayette County Commissioners Court authorized the acceptance of a $20,000 grant to purchase automatic license plate readers (ALPR) for the Sheriff’s Office. They voted unanimously to draft a resolution accepting the award at a meeting on June 23.

The County already owns two trailer-mounted ALPR units, which the Sheriff’s Office uses to conduct surveillance on vehicles passing through the County. The units use a camera to capture images of license plates that pass by. Automated software reads the license plates and records the information to a database shared by law enforcement throughout the country.

“We have two of them that are trailer-mounted that look like those speed limit signs to slow people down,” said Sheriff Keith Korenek. “In reality, it’s reading their license plates. From that, we can detect travel patterns.”

Korenek told Commissioners that his deputies used the ALPRs to help solve a homicide investigation in the Flatonia area a few years ago.

“Let’s say an agency has a vehicle stolen,” Korenek added. “If they enter it into the database as stolen, it will pop up when it comes by our trailer. Then we can recover a stolen vehicle.”

“That’s shared throughout the U.S.,” Korenek added. “We can read license cameras in Georgia and they can read ours.”

“So you can run, but you can’t hide,” said Angela Hahn, the County’s grant specialist who helped secure the grant for the Sheriff’s Office.

The grant money comes from the Motor Vehicle Prevention Authority of Texas. The $20,000 grant comes with a local match of $4,000.