On October 17th, Check CU visited the Village of Rantoul to observe the automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) that had been installed by Flock Safety earlier this year. One of the most noticeable camera locations, stationed immediately adjacent to the Rantoul Multicultural Community Center (MCC) and the Rantoul Youth Center, became the focus of the visit.
Check CU drove past the ALPR on Willow Pond Road four times between 5:20PM and 7:30PM, and also observed from the park area near the Youth Center. During this time of day, Check CU measured several five minute windows of time to determine that approximately 5.5 cars passed by the ALPR every minute.
For the 130 minute window observed, approximately 715 cars (based on 5.5 cars per minute) passed by the ALPR on Willow Pond Road. On November 7th, Check CU sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Village of Rantoul Clerk, Janet Gray, seeking all ALPR images taken at that location during the same period of time.
On November 15th, Rantoul Attorney David Wesner responded to the FOIA request, producing only three images of vehicles during the 130 minute period (click here to see the FOIA request response, including the three ALPR images). The Flock Safety ALPR had failed to capture hundreds of passing vehicles, and did not capture any images of Check CU’s vehicle, or any of the vehicles that Check CU observed passing by the camera.
Wesner said that the ALPR on Willow Pond Road was not functioning properly, but the study does not bode well for the efficacy of Flock Safety cameras, and other data also suggests that the ALPR capture rate is likely very poor.
Rantoul has also has a Flock Safety ALPR stationed precisely at their town border at the intersection of US-45 and County Road 1500E. Though Check CU drove by this ALPR twice, a similar FOIA request showed that this ALPR captured neither of those two instances.
Flock Safety has not published or released any engineering figures for its cameras which would indicate rates of successful plate reads at various speeds, angles, and lighting levels, nor have they published figures on the uptime for their systems, which are usually charged with solar panels.
Update November 18, 2021: Check CU has just received another FOIA response from the Village of Rantoul regarding a third ALPR location just north of the intersection of Veterans Pkwy and Pheasant Ridge (GPS coordinates 40.30471026519319,-88.12761695012863). Check CU drove by this ALPR four times, and the camera failed to capture the vehicle all four times. The camera also appeared to have captured far fewer vehicles than observed, though Check CU did not perform a traffic count for this location.
Thank you, CheckCU. The service you perform to this town in the interest of government accountability is extraordinary, yet utterly underappreciated.
Great work. I’m sending this around. Your third request for “files and data generated by the automated license plate reader” was a nice try. I wonder if a FOIA could be done not for license plates of course, but for a vehicle with no identifying info, but has been place on “hot list” and the reason a vehicle has been placed on the hot list in the camera.
Since I’m totally ignorant about this stuff, I don’t know how to interpret these very compelling data.
Do we conclude that this technology in general just isn’t ready for prime time? Or, rather, that THIS PARTICULAR company’s equipment simply sucks?
Formerly employed by this company. Their maintenance log for cameras is enormous. Rather than having a team just for these issues it is thrown into an install techs schedule. I can’t tell you how many times our screens on phones are pitch black , blood red , ghosting which is when area shows up but no cars in picture. That’s of phone app even works. Also it takes pictures of everything not just lic. plates which is the claim. OAnyone using this system should demand v3 brackets to hold cameras in place. Previous to 7-22 installs. Old mounts continue to slip and put camera capture out of view. When this company goes public on stock market it should be at 50 h 70 dollars. Once outside cpas and analy from outside come in this company will drop like a bomb. Great idea poor interior management and a woke culture beyond belief. Good luck getting a clear answer on anything