NAVASOTA, Texas (KRHD) — The Navasota Police Department is expanding its use of a license plate reader camera system to help officers locate stolen vehicles and track emergency alerts.
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The department has an expanded agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation to deploy the Vigilant License Plate Reader camera system on right of ways in the city, including Highway 6, Highway 90, and Highway 105. The department has already been using the camera for more than a year along Highway 6.
Navasota Police Department Chief Mike Mize said the trailer-mounted device performs a simple but important task.
"Photographs the license plates that travel past it and runs it through the database to check to see if it's stolen or if it's under maybe Amber Alert, Blue Alert, Silver Alert, anything like that, or another type of alert," Mize said.
Since using the system, police have located several stolen vehicles, some Amber Alerts, and a Silver Alert. I asked Mize for a recent success story.
"Vehicle traveling southbound went through the scan as a stolen, uh, trailer that's pulling a trailer and actually it scanned the vehicle pulling it, the trailer and the vehicle that was on the trailer all three came back stolen, and so the officers were actually in the area were able to do a traffic stop, recover all three vehicles," Mize said.
Neighbors said they understand the importance of the tool and support using the cameras. Local resident Greg Mock compared the system to a hunting dog.
"Kinda like that bird dog, he's pointing on that bird in the tree. You don't know exactly where that bird is at, but you know he's in there, so it helps you get to him there," Mock said.
"We need to use every tool that we have available for our law enforcement, To have this capability is another tool in the toolbox for us to use, absolutely we should be using it," Mock said.
Local resident Sheri Finke also supports the expanded use of the cameras.
"That that's pretty important to a lot of people in the area that have had that happen to them before. I think it's really important," Finke said.
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