A Vehicle Identifier
Corman Park Police increase identification by 400 percent
- By Andrew Elvish
- Jul 01, 2017
Corman Park is one of the
largest rural municipalities
surrounding Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, Canada. The
Corman Park Police aims
to protect and serve its diverse community
using the safest and most effective means
possible. Its officers work 12-hour shifts, patrolling
the community, responding to calls
for service and assisting the federal police in
criminal offenses and apprehensions.
John Garnet, chief at Corman Park Police,
knew that technology could help the
officers become more efficient on their dayto-
day patrols.
“We were issuing a lot of speeding tickets,
but our officers had no way of identifying
unregistered vehicles, suspended drivers
or wanted people unless they happened to
pull them over for a traffic violation or noticed
unusual behavior,” Garnet said. “It was
almost by chance.”
After attending a provincial law enforcement
event and seeing automatic license
plate recognition (ALPR) technology in
action, Garnet set out to acquire a system.
He approached Saskatchewan Government
Insurance (SGI), the body responsible for
organizing provincial policing programs, and
applied for a new grant that funded ALPR
systems for qualifying agencies.
“Because we primarily handle traffic
enforcement, they understood our reasons
for wanting the solution and granted our request,”
Garnet said.
SGI funded one AutoVu automatic license
plate recognition system by Genetec
Inc., which was installed on a Corman Park
Police patrol vehicle.
ROI in Two Months
After a successful one-day installation and
quick user training by Genetec, officers were
ready to hit the road.
“We started identifying a large number of
unregistered vehicles, suspended drivers and
people of interest,” Garnet said. “We were
executing more warrants for suspects who
have vehicles registered on the Canadian Police
Information Center (CPIC) database.”
The increase in the number of identified
vehicles was so dramatic, that the Corman
Park Police generated revenues that covered
the cost of the system in two months.
“We are identifying an average of 130
unregistered vehicles and 50 suspended drivers
per month,” Garnet said. “That’s a 400
percent increase over what we were doing
before. It used to be an 8:1 ratio of speeding
tickets versus other infractions, and now all
of sudden, it’s the opposite. This was when
we knew it was a game-changer.”
Garnet used these statistics to approach
the police commission and council for a second
system, and it was quickly approved.
“The decision was easy to make since we
knew that we could achieve a complete cost
recovery in a couple of months and keep our
community safer,” Garnet said.
Enhancing Officer Effectiveness, Safety
Today, the Corman Park Police has two patrol
cars each equipped with a three-camera
ALPR system. Soon, they will be getting a
third. On each vehicle, two cameras face forward
and a third camera faces behind. As officers
patrol their routes, the ALPR system
automatically captures the license plates of
vehicles coming from both directions. The
system compares all plate reads to a national
policing database, and alerts officers of offending
vehicles.
“The system has significantly increased
the effectiveness of our patrolling officers,”
Garnet said. “If the vehicle is entered into
the CPIC database, we’ll get a hit. The system
lets us know what we are dealing with,
providing a different alarm tone and onscreen
color for each type of hit. This helps
our officers from a personal safety perspective,
allowing them to delay a vehicle check
until back-up is around during potentially
dangerous encounters.”
Day or night, and during the snowy and
cold winter months in Saskatchewan, the
Corman Park Police rely on AutoVu to accurately
identify wanted vehicles. Officers
either park alongside roadways or drive
around on patrol routes. They also have the
option to manually enter specific plate numbers
for vehicles they are looking for.
“There’s no way in the world that an officer
can read every plate driving towards
him,” Garnet said. “Now, AutoVu does it
for them. It’s checking every single plate that
they pass.”
Keeping Public Safety
a Top Priority
When officers return to the Corman Park
Police precinct, all data is downloaded to
the main servers and the CPIC database is
updated via Wi-Fi. Garnet uses the Security
Center platform to investigate. He also
pulls reports to better understand the performance
of the system and relays information
back to SGI who compiles data to justify
program investments.
“Every police agency should have an
ALPR system,” Garnet said. “Driving around
and hoping to identify wanted vehicles or people
of interest just by chance is ineffective. Offending
or suspended drivers
and vehicles need to be
removed from our roads
because they are a hazard
to our community.”
This article originally appeared in the July 2017 issue of Security Today.