Starting this summer, the plate readers will be installed on every Kentwood Police Department patrol car to scan the plates of passing cars. Police Chief Bryan Litwin said the system will help officers locate stolen vehicles, vehicles involved in crimes and more.
“Let’s say we have a robbery in our city, and maybe we got a partial license plate from somebody,” he said. “We could go back into this system and run that partial license plate and see if any of our patrol cars have passed that vehicle that met that make and model.”
The license plate readers will be active every time a patrol vehicle is in use, Litwin explained.
While patrolling the city, the cameras will scan passing cars to collect their license plate number and the vehicle’s make, model and color. That information will be stored in a system that also pulls the name of the driver who is registered to that vehicle with the Secretary of State, Litwin said.
If the plate of that vehicle is not involved in a crime or an investigation, the police department will only store that information with 30 days, after which the data will be discarded.
But if the plate information ends up getting tied to a crime or investigation, it could be stored from 180 days to up to 20 years, depending on the type of crime involved, the police chief said.
During patrols, the system will notify a police officer if they pass by a car that is flagged as stole or involved with a crime. However, Litwin said the officer must verify the make and the model of the vehicle themselves before conducting a traffic stop.
Litwin is hoping to have the new cameras installed on all of the department’s patrol cars by July. Kentwood currently has about two dozen vehicles but will have up to 35 vehicles by this summer. The police department is adding 15 new officers thanks to a public safety millage increase passed by Kentwood voters last spring.
The new license plate reader system is one of the services being offered as part of a $5.9 million contract with Axon Enterprise to provide Kentwood police with new technology like upgraded body cameras, new advanced tasers, virtual reality training and an artificial intelligence report writing system.
The new body cameras will include a live translation system for officers that can translate 35 different languages, including Spanish, Bosnian and Nepali, in real time. Kentwood has a large immigrant population, with over 80 languages spoken by families attending Kentwood Public Schools.
The Kentwood City Commission approved the 10-year Axon contract, which is being partially funded by the public safety millage, at its Dec. 3 meeting.
The city of Kentwood has already begun testing out automatic license plate recognition cameras across the city, and Litwin said the technology has been hugely beneficial in helping solve violent crimes and stolen vehicle cases.
Kentwood installed 10 license plate cameras across the city in 2023, as part of a contract with Flock Safety, the same company the Kent County Sheriff’s Office and neighboring Wyoming contract with for their license plate recognition cameras.
In September, Litwin’s most recent quarterly update to the Kentwood City Commission, he said the license plate readers had helped the police department recover five stolen vehicles, locate a missing endangered person, locate a vehicle associated with assault, and helped develop investigative leads in five cases related to breaking and entering, hit and runs and more.
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