Henderson, NLV police to share license plate data to help locate stolen cars

By Megan Messerly

Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015 | 7:30 p.m.

The North Las Vegas and Henderson police departments will start sharing their license-plate data in a few days, after the North Las Vegas City Council approved a plan to do so at its meeting tonight.

The agreement, which the Henderson City Council approved in October, will allow police departments in the two cities to tap into each other’s databases with millions of license plate captures between them. Pictures of the plates are automatically snapped by readers on nine Henderson and four North Las Vegas police patrol cars.

In just a few seconds, the readers capture images of license plates around the patrol car, converts those images to text and runs the plates through a list of stolen vehicles, stolen license plates, missing children and wanted persons. Henderson has been using the devices for about four and a half years while North Las Vegas has been using them for about five.

The license plate data is also stored long term for police to return to and reference. Henderson has stored its data since the readers went into use in May 2011, and North Las Vegas police stores data in its system until it gets full — at least a couple of years. The databases keep track of information including pictures of the license plates, GPS coordinates of where the picture was taken and the time of the read.

IT departments in the two cities have already coordinated a plan to share information between those databases, and the program will take effect in a few days, said Henderson Police spokeswoman Michelle French. Both police departments say that sharing the information will help them retrieve stolen vehicles and locate wanted individuals.

“(Henderson) recovers cars for us, and we recover cars for them,” said North Las Vegas Police spokesman Officer Steven Wiese. “If you’re an owner and you have your vehicle stolen, that’s often the most important property people own, and the most expensive thing that people own.”

Wiese acknowledged that some members of the public may have concerns about privacy with the devices. However, he said that the information the devices gather is no different than what any citizen can already see when driving down the street.

“One of the biggest things that I want to make sure that people understand is that it doesn’t track a person,” Wiese said. “It’s not taking pictures of drivers. I think that’s the important thing. It’s not much different than a Google car driving down the street with cameras on top, taking pictures of things out in the public.”

Wiese said the department doesn’t track how many cases the license plate readers have helped. But, anecdotally, he said that officers routinely report that the readers help find stolen cars.

“If there’s a big parking lot in front of a Walmart, for instance, no officer is going to go through and type all those license plates,” Wiese said. “The stolen car might sit there for months, whereas with this vehicle, you can drive through the parking lot in a few minutes. It definitely helps getting stolen cars back.”