The Vernon Hills Village Board approved an ordinance expanding its police department’s use of automated license plate readers on Tuesday night, nearly three years after officials decided to use the cameras as a mechanism to investigate and deter crimes.
The deal with Flock Safety, the same vendor the village uses for its network of stationary automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, will see Vernon Hills police purchase a portable license plate recognition camera at a maximum cost of $8,500 over two years.
ALPRs use digital cameras and artificial intelligence to scan license plates of each passing car, and they have become more commonplace in Illinois and in Lake County in recent years.
Vernon Hills officials originally signed off on an agreement with vendor Flock Safety to lease at least 10 stationary ALPRs at a cost of about $20,000 per year in 2020.
The cameras deployed in Vernon Hills capture each passing vehicle’s registration information, color, make, the time, date and can even detect specific signatures such as the make of taillights, Vernon Hills Police Chief Patrick Kreis told the board in February.
“It automatically is an opportunity to identify suspect vehicles, either recently used in a crime and a crime was reported, or proactively alerting us that a criminal-related vehicle is entering into our jurisdiction,” Kreis told the News-Sun. “There’s only so much that a police officer with two eyes and one brain can sort through as you’re driving around town.”
It is unclear whether the cameras have impacted the occurrence of vehicular theft in Vernon Hills, and following a public records request, Kreis told the News-Sun the department does not have a system for categorizing or recording whether ALPR technology is used in cases or arrests.
“We can certainly come up with a couple of examples, but we don’t have a categorization system to say, ‘Here are all the cases that an ALPR was used, or here are the arrests in (which) an ALPR helped,'” Kreis said.
In an email sent to local media, though, contractor Flock Safety touted its ALPRs as having been used by VHPD to “recover 14 stolen vehicles, locate three missing persons and to identify 39 wanted vehicles,” including in the case of an individual suspected of murder.
VHPD Commander Andrew Gillespie also shared those numbers in the department’s February presentation about its desire to purchase more cameras.
“Today, ALPR is used in just about every case we investigate,” Gillespie told the board. “Cases that previously had 0% solvability now have another lead because of this system.”
Vernon Hills will use DUI and state seizure funds to purchase the portable ALPR, the newly passed ordinance outlines, and the expenditures will be incorporated into the police department’s proposed $12.1 million budget for 2024.
Kreis also said there are now more than a dozen patrol cars “rolling around with ALPR cameras tied into” the department’s Flock system.
He said the department had its “first success” with the patrol car devices in February after a retail theft suspect’s vehicle was captured by ALPRs on the way in and out of town by a combination of patrol car and stationary ALPRs, prompting a warrant for the suspect’s arrest.
Earlier this year, Vernon Hills police arrested a residential burglary suspect whose license plate was captured by a neighbor’s external camera, eventually returning expensive photo equipment to a local photographer, who told the board she believed the ALPRs were instrumental in the case.
“With these kinds of cameras (police) were able to catch this guy that came in and robbed my house, burglarized it,” she said. “It didn’t just affect me.”
Rapid expansion
Flock Safety has been a key beneficiary as more police departments have embraced the Atlanta-based company’s products, including in Lake County in 2023, where a Flock ALPR deal recently gained approval from the Highland Park City Council, with one member opposed.
Mundelein, Libertyville, Zion and Gurnee all have invested in the devices in recent years, and Barrington approved an ALPR purchase agreement earlier this year.
The company now has partnerships with more than 150 Illinois law enforcement agencies.
The implementation of Flock Safety ALPRs has come despite concerns raised by some privacy advocates in recent years about circumstances in which the cameras have implicated innocent civilians as crime suspects.
A 2021 Washington Post report detailed the debate over ALPRs unfolding in suburban Golden, Colorado, after a case in nearby Aurora, where police held a Black family at gunpoint and handcuffed them after ALPRs incorrectly alerted police the vehicle was stolen.
The Gilliam family sued the department for unlawful search, seizure, excessive force and denial of equal protection after video of the family, which included young children crying while handcuffed on the ground, went viral.
In December, car rental giant Hertz reached a $168 million settlement with former customers who were arrested or jailed when the company falsely reported them for stealing vehicles. In some of the cases, police used ALPRs to identify and chase down drivers.
Kreis said he is unaware of any instances in Vernon Hills where there has been a chase or arrest because of a case of mistaken plates or a faulty alert.
He said Flock’s system compares every photographed vehicle to a national “hot sheet” of vehicles reported stolen, or associated with Amber or Silver Alerts, which are cases of abducted children and missing persons. Matches are called hits.
Officers might get a hit on a license plate that is from Texas, but has the same unique set of numbers as a “hot” Illinois license plate, so they must clarify when hits are reported, Kreis said.
“The camera clarity has gotten better, the machine learning of the system, so it not only looks at license plates, but it also learns the unique, like, taillight patterns of the different cars,” Kreis said. “So if all we know is that we have a blue Kia or a red Ford pickup, it will allow us to query for that.”
Kreis also said the battery technology and the solar panels which power the cameras have “just constantly improved” in two years.
What do the numbers show?
Kreis said he could not say with certainty whether vehicular thefts and carjackings have decreased in town, noting that “the numbers are still relatively small in our community.”
Police records from 2012 through February of this year show that Vernon Hills has seen two vehicular hijacking cases — commonly referred to as carjackings — in that span, and 80 vehicular thefts.
Twenty-seven vehicular thefts have occurred since 10 ALPR cameras were installed in October of 2020. According to department records obtained via a public records request, police have made arrests or closed cases in 25 of those situations, with two still open or under investigation.
Vernon Hills police estimated that ALPRs were used in 14 of those cases, and did not share year-by-year statistics showing whether the crimes are occurring more or less frequently.
The department invoked an extension to respond to a public records request seeking the number of cases ALPRs were used in to respond to retail or property thefts, homicides, Amber or Silver Alerts and vehicles registered to people with active warrants for arrest.
“But I can tell you (vehicular theft is) a very concerning issue for this police department,” Kreis said. “The use of stolen vehicles remains one of our foremost public safety concerns. And I would be remiss if I didn’t emphasize, again, the importance of the public’s partnership and residents locking their vehicles, taking their key fobs with them because the overwhelming majority — I am saying above 90% of the stolen cars — are vehicles left unlocked with the owner’s key fob left inside the vehicle.”
