Police License Plate Readers Come To Aspen, CO
New technology for tracking and managing parking restrictions is coming to Aspen. The automatic license plate recognition systems will scan, track, date, and store the location of parked vehicles to make sure they do not exceed the 2 hour parking limit imposed by the Aspen City Council. The days of using chalk to mark how long a car has been parked are behind us, with these new efficient and somewhat disturbing surveillance abilities.
These license plate scanners are rapidly becoming standard equipment on police and law enforcement vehicles in Colorado and nationwide. Cameras are mounted to vehicles that photograph and scan the tags, and save the location and time via GPS tracking. The systems have a capacity to track many hundreds of plates per hour. If the police vehicle scans the same car in the same spot after two hours, the officer or parking official is instantly alerted, and a ticket is issued.
Parking enforcement is only one possible use for the Licence Plate Readers. When matched with on-board law enforcement, court, or DMV databases, they are commonly used to track stolen vehicles, or identify cars registered to someoen whose license may be suspended, or who may have an outstanding warrant for failure to appear.
No doubt that these systems are a tremendous efficiency in what police officers are able to do with their time. But there are real privacy implications and questions about whether the government should really be storing data about the whereabouts of citizens in giant law enforcement databases. This information is being collected, and it can easily be used for highly intrusive purposes.
But the immidiate practical concern is that this constant passive police monitoring is going to make it very difficult to hide. You won’t be able to get away with very much, from parking violations to stolen cars and outstanding arrest warrants.
—
If you are charged with a crime in Colorado, please contact us for a free case evaluation and criminal defense consultation.