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Automatic licence plate readers yielding results

Jan 19, 2017 | 11:00 AM

Two automatic licence plate readers installed in November have already shown results in the city.

A report on community safety officers and municipal enforcement showed unregistered vehicle violations went up in 2016 compared to 2015.

The devices, donated from SGI and the Gold Eagle Casino, catches an image of a licence plate and automatically runs checks on it through SGI information and Canadian Police Information Centre databases. The check identifies any factors that might be of police interest.

“We put them in in November so we’re probably going to see a significant increase in that particular [category], unregistered vehicles, and those are vehicles that aren’t registered and should not be driving on the road,” Albert Headrick said, director of protective services.

“If there’s accidents and if someone is seriously injured, where’s the compensation from? They do have a victim service category but still that being said there’s requirements and there are laws that your vehicle is registered.”

In 2015 there were 316 cases of unregistered vehicles dealt with by community safety officers, and that figure went up to 461 the year after.

Suspended driver violations also went up, but more dramatically, from 39 to 116 over the two year period.

Headrick said these numbers could possibly go up even more in the year of 2017 with the aid of the automatic licence plate readers.

 

Katherine Svenkeson is a reporter with battlefordsNOW. She can be reached at katherine.svenkeson@jpbg.ca or on Twitter @ksvenkeson