Staff
The Rainy River District OPP has been nabbing more drivers over the past week-and-a-half thanks to new technology borrowed from the Kenora detachment.
The loaned cruiser features automatic licence plate recognition (ALPR) equipment, which captures licence plate numbers of passing vehicles and, in turn, can detect drivers on the road with expired or suspended licenses—among other infractions.
About 30 cruisers in the province now have the equipment.
“It has two cameras, one on the front and one on the back,” said Cst. Darren Daniw.
“So as a car is coming toward you, it will read the front plate and as it passes, it will read the back plate,” he explained.
“The response time for the read is half-a-second to one second at the most,” Cst. Daniw added, noting a photo of the plate and vehicle then comes up on a screen in the cruiser.
Cst. Daniw updated the system Wednesday morning and indicated then there were 9.48 million licence plates registered in the system.
“Basically, there’s something wrong with those licence plates,” he noted.
“So it will hit on a suspended driver, stolen licence plate, unlicensed driver, expired validation tag—there’s 30 different hits on licence plates,” he said.
Cst. Daniw added he can’t drive very far down the road without the system going off.
“We’ve had hits all day long,” he remarked. “It’s been very successful.”
When the officer can, he/she will stop the vehicle that has been identified with a problem.
“I can be writing a ticket for someone and it’s continually going off because cars are driving past with problems,” Cst. Daniw said.
“It could keep you busy all day long.”
He said the local OPP detachment hopes to have the ALPR-equipped cruiser here for at least another week, but warned it could be back in the district at anytime.
“It will float in and out,” Cst. Daniw stressed.
He added it is a good warning for drivers to ensure they have their licence, plates, and insurance up-to-date.
