News

By Rich Pollack

    Plans to install license-plate recognition cameras along State Road A1A are moving forward, but not as quickly as many from the law enforcement agencies involved had hoped.
    Late last month, Highland Beach town officials gave Police Chief Craig Hartmann preliminary approval to continue negotiations with contractor NDI Recognition Systems, which currently provides cameras and software to the Delray Beach Police Department and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.  
    In asking the town to waive its requirement for three bids before selecting a contractor, Hartmann said that working with NDI would make it easier for Highland Beach to partner with neighboring law-enforcement agencies and thus reduce costs.
    “It’s going to be cost effective for our town to partner with Delray Beach or the Sheriff’s Office and share data,” Hartmann said.
    License-plate recognition systems, like the one offered by NDI, use cameras to scan license plates as they pass. Should a license plate number match one in a database as being on a stolen vehicle or vehicle used in a crime, for example, an alert would be given to dispatchers or police personnel monitoring the system.
    Because Highland Beach does not have its own dispatchers, it would need to rely on either Delray Beach or the Sheriff’s Office to house the database and provide monitoring.
    Though it appears the Highland Beach Police Department has the green light and the funding to move forward with the project, Hartmann said it will still be months before cameras are installed.
    “We’re still in the development stages and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done before it’s operational,” he said.
    Hartmann and other police chiefs, who have been working on providing a coordinated license-plate recognition system for several months, discovered late last month that there may be even more work than anticipated.
    At a meeting with representatives from Florida Power & Light as well as Palm Beach County’s traffic division, law enforcement leaders learned there is still more coordination required with other county and state agencies before the project can move forward.
    “We learned that there are more entities that need to be involved in the decision-making process,” says Jeff Messer, a spokesman for the Delray Beach Police Department. “We aren’t as close to finalizing this as we thought we’d be.”
    Delray Beach currently has a mobile license-plate recognition system but is hoping to install a fixed system as well.
    A lingering issue that still needs to be worked out is whether cameras will be allowed on state rights of way along A1A.
    In addition, not all municipalities involved in the project have signed off on funding.
    Still, there is optimism that a coordinated license-plate recognition system will be in place.
    “At this point its still a viable concept,” says former Ocean Ridge Police Chief Chris Yannuzzi, who serves as a consultant for the initiative. “This is the first time out of the box for us to try to do a multi-jurisdictional project of this magnitude.”