BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KBAK/KBFX) Bakersfield police say license plate-reading cameras helped them make arrests in two cases this month, including one in which a suspect allegedly met with a 16-year-old girl and another involving the alleged kidnapping and rape of an 11-year-old girl.
In both cases, the Bakersfield Police Department used Flock cameras to obtain suspect vehicle information that led to the arrests, according to police.
Bakersfield police credit Flock cameras in arrests tied to alleged child sex crimes (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“I’ll tell you this, without the Flock camera system and the hit it provided, we wouldn’t have the information we had about the vehicle, and it wouldn’t have led to the positive ID of the suspect,” said Det. Bijan Gharib of the Bakersfield Police Department.
Detectives say the system can provide license plate numbers tied to suspects, which can then help investigators identify who may be connected to a vehicle.
“So now that we have that license plate information it leads us to the registered owner, other people that may be using the vehicle, relatives, all that kind of stuff. Then once the ball got rolling on that and Flock was able to get us that information it was only a matter of time before we were able to identify the suspect,” Gharib said.
Bakersfield police credit Flock cameras in arrests tied to alleged child sex crimes (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The use of Flock cameras has drawn criticism from some who argue the surveillance is an invasion of privacy.
“A few years ago, the California state auditor looked at the LAPD’s data. At that time, the LAPD had three hundred and twenty million plate hits,” said Catherine Crump, a UC Berkeley law professor who studies technology law.
Crump said she supports license plate readers but is concerned about the expanding network of cameras and how long data is kept.
Bakersfield police credit Flock cameras in arrests tied to alleged child sex crimes (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“99.9% of the data pertained to people who weren’t on any hot list or wanted for any known crime. You just shouldn’t be keeping data on innocent people for long stretches of time,” Crump said.