New Jersey Police Department Modernizes Its ALPR Technology

  • Jan 08, 2024

Genetec Inc., a provider of unified security, public safety, operations, and business intelligence solutions, announced that the Fort Lee, New Jersey Police Department has modernized its automatic license plate recognition technology (ALPR) with Genetec AutoVu™ Cloudrunner vehicle-centric investigative system.

The Borough of Fort Lee is connected to Manhattan, NY, via the George Washington Bridge. Its proximity to the major city brings traffic congestion and some transient crime to the area. Its legacy ALPR system generated just a list of plates and vehicles, and teams would then manually sort and narrow the data to find the vehicle in question. The PD looked to minimize that investigative time to find suspects and close cases faster with better access to vehicle information.

They found the solution in Genetec AutoVu Cloudrunner, a solar-powered, subscription-based, easy-to-install, turnkey solution that uses vehicle characteristics combined with ALPR to enhance police departments’ ability to solve crimes. Its high-quality sensors deliver accurate reads day and night, in any kind of weather.

“AutoVu Cloudrunner has incredible edge-based intelligence and search capabilities,” said Fort Lee Police Department Lieutenant Thomas Porto. “When we’re looking for a vehicle the search is wicked fast, and being able to narrow down searches by make, model, color and time frame helps us speed up our investigation.”

Porto shared a recent case where the department received a 911 call late at night from a housing facility who observed suspicious individuals in a vehicle on the property. Tapping the AutoVu Cloudrunner camera in the area, the PD was able to use the time frame, location, and vehicle description to match the license plate info, which identified it as stolen. When the suspects abandoned the vehicle at a nearby school with which the PD had federated video, they were able to use the Genetec Omnicast™ video management system to see where the suspects had gone, quickly apprehending them safely.

The AutoVu Cloudrunner solution is solar-powered and plug-and-play complete, making it easy for the Fort Lee PD to deploy “We mounted the cameras, worked with Genetec for a few minutes, and were off to the races,” Porto said.

The audit features of AutoVu Cloudrunner also help cut down investigative time and resources. When they start a search, for example, they only need to enter the case number once, and all subsequent searches in that query will be tied to that case number and logged in audit trails for compliance. “This is such a game-changer,” said Porto. “With our previous system, we’d need to re-enter the case number and other information for every single search. That was cumbersome and slowed our investigative work. AutoVu Cloudrunner eliminates all of that.”

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