AKRON, Ohio — The Akron Police Department is adding a bunch of new eyes to the streets.
We're not talking about more officers, rather the eyes of surveillance cameras that capture photos of license plates.
Last week the city began installing Flock automated license plate readers (ALPR) throughout Akron. So far, 28 of the cameras are up and 117 more will be installed possibly by the end of the month.
The city used $405,000 in American Rescue Plan dollars to pay for the system. The yearly reoccurring cost will be $362,000.
Deputy Chief Mike Caprez said the cameras, which use "object recognition", will be mounted in many different neighborhoods in all wards of the city, but there will be a greater saturation in higher crime areas as determined by data. In addition, there will be several cameras near the University of Akron.
Safety concerns around the university were heightened last September after a shooting took the lives of Maya McFetridge and Alex Beasley just off campus.
Ryan Anderson and Olivia Nash, both freshmen at UA, said they welcome the cameras as a way to fight crime.
"I think there should definitely be some cameras. There's too much crime that goes on that people just run away from," Anderson said.
"It could definitely help locate and send more police to that area," Nash added.
Caprez said over the past week the cameras have already helped police spot and recover stolen cars.
The deputy chief gave News 5 a demonstration by creating a "hot list" to search for sightings of any white Honda SUV captured by the current 28 Flock cameras.
"There were 178 different captures of white Honda SUV's in the city of Akron in the last 24 hours," Caprez said.
When he added a roof rack to the search, the number of cars was narrowed down to seven.
"If all we had was a white Honda with a rack on the top and no plate, that would allow us to see all the possible plates for all those vehicles," Caprez said.
Akron police see the technology as a game-changer, giving officers access to a tool that could help track down suspects who drive off from violent crimes or steal cars.
"We can put that information into the system and anytime a vehicle matching that description passes a Flock camera, we will get an audio and visual alert," Caprez said.
However, Gary Daniels from the ACLU of Ohio has privacy concerns with the license plate readers.
"Automatic license plate readers have tremendous capacity if they are tweaked or set up in such a way to monitor our daily whereabouts," Daniels said.
He believes police department and cities need to be clear about regulating and restricting the way the cameras are utilized.
"What are they used for? What can we not use them for? For instance, stationing them outside political protests or rallies," Daniels said. "Just imagine a system where police could quite literally follow you around or piece together where you worship. Did you go to the gun show? Are you seeking an abortion?"
Caprez said he understands the privacy concerns, but stressed the focus is on solving crimes not following average residents.
"Pedestrian movement will not cause the camera to go off. It does not have facial recognition. This system is just capturing information that's already available to us, putting it together in a format that's making it more useful," he said.
Caprez said the system is designed to store data for 30 days before it's automatically deleted.
"If we do find evidence, we can pull it off the system and store it in evidence.com. We'll keep it as long-term evidence, not just a database where we can search people who have come and gone."
Several other Northeast Ohio communities use Flock cameras, including Cleveland, Solon, Bainbridge, Macedonia, Mentor, Westlake, Avon Lake, Lakewood, Willoughby, Brunswick among others.
