Lavonia Police to Adopt Flock Safety System

Lavonia Police will soon have a new way to capture tag numbers and other information on suspicious vehicles.

It’s called the Flock Safety system.

According to their Website, Flock Safety’s patented Vehicle Fingerprint™ technology lets law enforcement search by vehicle make, color, type, license plate, state of the license plate, missing plate, covered plate, paper plate, and unique vehicle details like roof racks, bumper stickers, and more.

Lavonia Assistant Police Chief Daniel Carson came before the City Council Monday to explain the benefits of the system.

Carson said the Department already has a tag reader on one of their vehicles but he said having the Flock stationary camera would allow officers to capture images of any suspicious vehicle that may come through Lavonia.

“These are stationary cameras that would capture the tag and vehicle information of any vehicle that passes by there,” he explained. “So it’s not just stolen vehicles or no insurance and things like that. If an incident happened somewhere else in the country and it may happen to be a red vehicle that information can be put into that where it will notify us of that vehicle entering or exiting the City. Franklin County is currently installing these cameras and I think it would be a great benefit for the City.”

Another benefit, Carson said, is that the Flock camera system is connected to thousands of law enforcement agencies across the country.

Lavonia Police Chief Bruce Carlisle cited one incident in which the Flock camera system was able to locate the vehicle of a murder suspect. It happened in Jefferson, GA.

He said the suspect’s vehicle was ultimately picked up by a Flock camera in South Carolina.

Ideally, Carlisle said they would like to locate the cameras on I-85 and in other parts of the City where there is a lot of traffic from off the Interstate.

Right now, State law does not allow Flock cameras on Interstates.

Originally, Carlisle asked for funding for 10 cameras but the City Council narrowed that down to four to start with at a cost of $13,900.

After hearing from Carson and Carlisle the Council voted unanimously to fund four cameras to start with as well as allocate funds for the cameras in next year’s budget.