License Plate Reading Cameras Help Oak Forest Police Combat Crime

OAK FOREST, IL — Oak Forest Police will now have more assistance in seeing crime happen in real-time thanks to 17 new license plate readers that are being installed in main thoroughfares around the city.

The 17 license plate reader cameras were placed on major streets or intersections where police officials believed would best serve officers, Oak Forest Police Chief Jason Reid said. The cameras, which were installed by Flock Safety, are being used by about 150 police departments around Illinois to provide law enforcement agencies, which used information taken from the license plate readers to detect if a vehicle has been stolen or is associated with a known person wanted for a crime or with a missing or endangered person, the company said.

In Oak Forest, Reid said that 16 of the 17 cameras that were licensed for city use have been installed throughout the community. The cameras have already paid off as the department was working on a missing persons case and police officials had vehicle information that was associated with the missing person out of Tennessee.

The vehicle was tracked on a local camera, which alerted police to the fact that the person being sought could be inside the vehicle. Because of the Flock Safety network of cameras that is located not only around Illinois but around the country, a person being sought in Nashville was located in Oak Forest.

That person was found to be safe, Reid said, who added that the person likely would not have been tracked to Oak Forest had it not been for the Flock Safety camera system.

Police officials have also said the camera system has helped locate missing people who were part of Silver Alerts. That person was found because of a Flock Safety camera in Maywood, which alerted police to the fact that the person had been reported missing.

The City of Oak Forest will spend around $42,000 per year for the cameras, a city spokesperson told WBBM. But for Reid, the investment the city is making in the cameras is likely to pay off in major ways.

“Departments that have installed this type of technology have seen reductions in some crimes while allowing the reallocation of personnel to areas where a potential criminal threat may occur in real-time,” Reid said in an email.