Earlier this week, Truckee Police used a technology to catch two wanted suspects.

It was a license plate reading camera. 

The device is from the company, Flock Safety.

It's powered by a solar panel and operates 24/7.

The tech is designed to scan vehicles and their license plate to add them to a database to help local law enforcement with crime prevention.

"Immediately after the plate is captured it is compared to different state and national crime databases," said Holly Beilin, Director of Communications for Flock Safety. "So, it can determine whether that vehicle is stolen, associated with a wanted offender or a missing person. If that is the case, local law enforcement in the area immediately receive an alert."

Flock Safety has been operating since 2017 and has partnerships with over 2,000 law enforcement agencies. 

For all license plates that are recorded that aren't associated with a crime, they are stored for 30 days for possible future investigations.

For some who may have privacy concerns, the cameras do not have facial recognition and most cameras are placed on public roadways.

Flock Safety says their contributions have helped to lower crime.

"So based on estimates, we're now helping law enforcements solve roughly seven percent of reported crime nationwide," Beilin said.

Truckee Police has been using these cameras for about 30 days and are already seeing impressive results.

"Within the first 30 days we had 12 stolen vehicle detections, one felony vehicle, which ended up being a murder suspect from out of the Sacramento area," said Kyle Vickers, Lieutenant with Truckee Police Department. "Which we were able to take into custody. So, it's been very successful."

For tracking the murder suspect, Truckee Police received a 15-minute notice from Sacramento Police that the suspect could be passing through Truckee.

They waited 30 minutes when one of the Flock Safety cameras spotted the suspected car then a notification was sent to Truckee Police.

"Once we got that notification from a camera that was situated in a residential area right behind us here, we were able to figure exactly where that vehicle was," Lieutenant Vickers said. "What it looked like, and we could project the direction of travel from that point."

Other than crime prevention, the cameras serve another purpose.

Lieutenant Vickers says with Truckee having tourists and vacation homes, they never have an accurate count for their population.

With Truckee being prone to wildfires, they want to have a better gauge in the event of evacuations.

The cameras help with counting cars and getting an idea of how many people are traveling down their roads.

"With that kind of data, we take that to our emergency management team," Lieutenant Vickers said. "They populate it into their modeling for evacuations models and we can work hand and hand to help increase our efficiency on responses during wildfire evacuations."

The department has 17 cameras ready with about eight of them operating right now.

Truckee Police is currently on a one-year pilot program with Flock Safety.

After a successful start, they say the future is looking bright for the next 11 months.

"And we've just continued to have success stories as this program is continuing," Lieutenant Vickers said. "And then again, we're really just in the first month of this pilot project. We're really excited to see what a year looks like."

While the cameras can be useful tools for law enforcement, Flock Safety also works with businesses and neighborhoods as well.

If you're interested in getting one installed, you can find the link below: 

Flock Safety | Eliminate Crime with Flock Safety.