The Pocatello Police Department will soon have technology that it believes will be a game-changer in its ability to solve crimes and arrest criminals.

The department is spending about $102,000 to purchase 34 license plate readers from Flock Safety. The readers will be placed along city streets to provide Pocatello police with a technological edge over criminals by capturing license plate numbers and information about vehicle types.

Police can then use this information in everything from missing person cases, to robbery and murder investigations, to searching for stolen cars.

Pocatello Police Chief Roger Schei said the license plate readers will greatly enhance his department’s capabilities.

“If we had this technology 10 or 20 years ago, cases would have been solved quicker and this would have been a game-changer for cases that went cold,” Schei said.

Pocatello police said the license plate readers aren’t only useful for apprehending suspects and solving crimes. Just having the devices will be a huge crime deterrent, police said.

They cite a 2019 study in Cobb County, Georgia, that showed crime decreased by more than 60 percent six months after the county’s police force started using the license plate readers, according to a story by Fox 5 TV in Atlanta, where Flock Safety is based.

The Fox 5 story talked about how after the license plate readers were installed in Cobb County that several categories of crime including robberies, residential burglaries and vehicle thefts decreased significantly.

“This technology is beneficial not only for the police, but for the community,” Schei said. “The law enforcement agencies I’ve talked to, and I’ve talked to them from all over the United States, they say this technology helped to dramatically reduce crime. That’s what we’re hoping for in Pocatello.”

Police said they can use the license plate readers for investigations in which they are searching for a specific license plate number or a specific type of vehicle. The Flock Safety license plate readers collect that information from passing vehicles and store the data for 30 days.

Flock Safety’s license plate readers recently gained attention when police in Twin Falls used them to help capture an escaped prison inmate and the person who reportedly help him escape from a hospital in Boise.

Several law enforcement agencies in Utah use Flock Safety’s license plate readers and the devices are gaining popularity in Idaho, Pocatello police said.

Pocatello police can envision a wide variety of investigations and scenarios where the technology could be very useful but they also want the community to know that the license plate readers will only be used on specific cases and the public’s constitutional right to privacy will be protected.

“With any technology, we have to make sure people’s rights are protected,” Schei said. “The things we are gathering (via the license plate readers) are in plain view. The license plate readers will not be on private property.”

The license plate readers have no facial recognition technology and can only collect license plate numbers and information on the types and colors of the vehicles they record, Pocatello police said.

For example, Pocatello police said that if a child was abducted by someone in a white van, they could use the license plate readers to immediately search for white vans near the location of the abduction.

Pocatello police will also have access to the Flock Safety license plate reader data collected by all law enforcement agencies that use the devices, giving them a wider net to look for suspects.

The license plate readers can also be easily moved around to different locations, allowing Pocatello police to focus on particular parts of the city that are experiencing increases in crime.

For example, if a particular neighborhood is seeing an increase in burglaries, the devices could be moved to streets in that part of Pocatello to help identify potential suspect vehicles.

Pocatello police said their license plate readers will become operational in January and February of 2025. The money to purchase the devices came out of funds already included in the Pocatello Police Department’s annual budget.

Police say the license plate readers will be a force multiplier that will enable them to solve more crimes, deter crimes and make Pocatello an even safer place.

“Most people know they’re being recorded most places they go,” Schei said. “If you walk into Costco or Walmart, you’re being recorded. I think that if a crime is committed, people want us to have the best technology possible to solve the crime.”