By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
The Great Bend Police Department will soon be utilizing 12 cameras
positioned around town to assist in the capture of criminals. The term “Big
Brother” was thrown around by a few citizens for an abuse of government power
or an invasion of privacy with mass surveillance.
When U.S. Senator Jerry Moran announced Great Bend received a $132,000 federal
grant, he joked that this equipment is not about catching people speeding or
running stop signs.
RELATED STORY: Great Bend receives $132K grant for license plate reading technology
The technology will be utilized to read license plates to potentially catch a
criminal fleeing, alert law enforcement of a stolen vehicle or a potential
kidnapping suspect. Great Bend Police Chief Steve Haulmark said the cameras
will record every vehicle that passes by and information will be stored in a
Cloud database for 30 days.
"Unless we extended that window, which I don't know why we would, for a specific investigation, we might ask them to hold on to it a little bit longer," said Haulmark. "The great thing is, a lot of the crime happening in the overnight hours, we might not know anything but we can start looking at our cameras. They'll show all the major ingress and egress points in the city."
The cameras will be positioned around the major entrances into Great Bend.
"There is an opportunity with this system that we could federate other cameras in," said Haulmark. "For example, if Walmart had a great camera viewing 10th Street we could federate their camera to the system so we could view that as well. There is a slight upcharge to that and we would have to gain cooperation of the businesses."
The Police Department entered a one-year lease for the license plate
technology. Along with a one-time expense of $7,000 for software and installation,
each camera leases for $2,500 per year.