Sheriff's office eyes license plate readers
“We essentially could log, if we had an abduction, of all the vehicles that left during that time and we can start doing investigative leads on all the vehicles.” — Sheriff William Honsal
The Humboldt County Sheriff's Office plans to buy and use automatic license plate tracking cameras, saying it will help officers solve crimes.
Immobile automatic license plate readers, which will face streets and roadways, can be fixed to objects like telephone poles and automatically capture the license plates of passing vehicles, storing the information in a database that deletes itself after 30 days.
Currently, Humboldt County has three of the cameras installed: two in McKinleyville and one just outside of Eureka.
During Tuesday's Humboldt County Board of Supervisors meeting, Sheriff William Honsal said four more are on the way, two for northern Humboldt County and two to the south, both on Highway 101.
“Some of our high-profile missing persons cases that have been around the city of Eureka and throughout Humboldt County, we essentially could log, if we had an abduction, of all the vehicles that left during that time and we can start doing investigative leads on all the vehicles,” Honsal said.
Honsal noted — given the Yurok, Hoopa, and Blue Lake Rancheria tribal police departments area all deputized, therefore granting them access to the camera data — the cameras could help address the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Person crisis via vehicle identification for potential abductees.
Fortuna Police Chief Casey Day recalled the 2022 bank robbery of Coast Central Credit Union, which remains an unsolved crime.
The Fortuna Police Department obtained CCTV footage but lacked a decent angle to identify a license plate.
Day, formerly with the Anderson Police Department in Shasta County, cited their success with the cameras as a reason they could work in Humboldt County.
“In the way of Grand Theft Auto or stolen vehicle recovery, that number almost doubled within a year from 30 recoveries to over 70 recoveries, which again, is a lot for a smaller jurisdiction,” Day said.
Privacy concerns swirl around the cameras. The American Civil Liberties Union called on legislators to set strict guidelines limiting who can view the data and under what circumstances.
Undersheriff Justin Braud told the board that all use of the cameras is logged and audited on a monthly basis. Any other law enforcement agency would need a memorandum of understanding with the sheriff's office to access the data.
“We believe using this technology multiplies the forces we have, allows us to capture and distribute objective evidence to the right users and allows engagement with the community to support and grow this program once they see the benefits of it,” Braud said.