Fairfax County Police

Fairfax County Police Say They Found 4 Missing People Thanks to New License Plate Readers

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A controversial technology along Fairfax County roads has yielded potentially life-saving benefits, according to police.

The county recently rolled out about 25 new cameras that read license plates, scanning a vehicle's tag and alerting police if there's an active search for that vehicle.

"It's certainly a significant help in our crime fight where we've recovered stolen vehicles, recovered firearms – some that had been stolen – and also have made a significant amount of arrests based on this technology," Fairfax County police Lt. James Curry said.

The tag readers also helped police find four missing people.

"Possibly saving a life, and you certainly can't put any price tag on that,” Curry said. “What it means for the family to be able to return them."

The cameras are active in thousands of communities across the country, and each tag is uploaded to a secure national database.

Most communities in the D.C. area have a version of the cameras, but the new devices in Fairfax also record the make of the vehicle and its color.

If police anywhere issue a lookout for a plate number or a make, model and color of a car connected to a crime, the database scans for recent matches, exponentially shrinking the radius of a search.

Fairfax County police said they keep the photos for about 30 days and then delete them. In the event they need to find a vehicle in a couple of weeks, they have a little bit of time to go back and see if it's been on the move recently.

The ACLU of Virginia recently said there's "reason to expect it will replicate the same racial disparities we see in other law enforcement activities."

Fairfax County police said they're only alerted to vehicles already associated with a potential crime.

“These are vehicles that have been entered into a national database through an officer for an established reason," Curry said.

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