Spartanburg Police say ‘Flock’ cameras are helping to fight crime

SPARTANBURG, S.C. – The Spartanburg Police Department is utilizing “Flock” license plate readers to help fight crime.

For the department, the cameras work as another set of eyes.

“They are a tool and another tool in our tool box,” Spartanburg Police Captain Tim Metz said.

Metz said the department has 11 Flock cameras set up throughout the city in addition to four mobile units.

“Flock is a proprietary brand which is invested in license plate readers or LPR’s as they are commonly referred to,” Metz added.

While it may look modest, law enforcement said it has a huge job to do.

“Essentially, what it does is it takes photographs of license plates as people travel on the public highways throughout the City of Spartanburg and beyond,” Metz said. “Our population grows to nearly 100,000 people during the day. So, each of our 11 stationary cameras roughly, on a daily basis, we will get 80,000 reads, which is pretty incredible. Over the last 30 days, we have about 2 million reads, of those 2 million maybe 1% has any significance to law enforcement and that’s an example of the volume we deal with.”

We’re told the units are strategically set up in high traffic areas.

“We want to stress to the public they are not put in a place where we are going to violate someone’s privacy; the only thing it takes a photograph of is the license plate to include the vehicle on that public road way,” Metz said.

That information can be accessed by law enforcement to help them in different situations.

“We really have narrowed our focus to felony activity, stolen vehicles, stolen tags, Amber Alerts, blue alerts, silver alerts, things like that,” Metz said. “If we had an Amber Alert or somebody who has been suffering from dementia and they left in a vehicle we can get immediate alerts to tell us that vehicle has passed by one of our flock devices, so officers and everyone else can go and intercept that vehicle.”

They also help locate suspects.

“If we have a vehicle we are looking for, we put it on a ‘hot list’ so if we have someone involved in a bank robbery, a shooting or an abduction we can actually add that to our list, so every officer that has access to our system knows that they are behind that vehicle or that vehicle has passed through a location,” Metz said.

We’re told the police expanded their flock program in October and recently expanded their capabilities by installing new cameras.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WSPA 7NEWS.