Vigilant Solutions announced today that its fixed cameras are being used by the La Verne Police Department in California to improve the safety of the community. La Verne is a small community within Los Angeles County covering just over 8 square miles and with a population of just over 30,000. The network of 21 fixed cameras has been active now for eight months and is having a noticeable impact on the department's ability to both protect its neighborhoods from known vehicles of interest and investigate and close cases more rapidly, according to the company.

Lt. Chris Fenner explains, "La Verne is not a big city by any stretch of the imagination, but because we are in L.A. County we see our fair share of criminals either passing through our community or specifically coming into our community to perpetrate crimes. We take an oath to protect and serve, and we take that very seriously. We've seen otherwise peaceful communities turned upside down by crime; when that happens, it impacts everything – property values, quality of life, business, and much more.  We wanted to take a very proactive measure to reduce the crime that is taking place and prevent future crimes from ever occurring.

"We saw other neighboring communities create a 'virtual fence' using license plate reader (LPR) cameras and heard about the results they were generating. After doing a fair amount of research, we elected to install 21 fixed LPR cameras at strategic locations around our community. After only 8 months in operation, I can tell you that they have had a very significant impact. We have identified 28 occupied stolen vehicles entering La Verne and successfully stopped them all. To put this into perspective, we averaged one to two stolen recoveries annually prior to having LPR. Stolen vehicles are often used to perpetrate other crimes, and I can say without a doubt that we prevented crimes from taking place by stopping these vehicles. Some of these vehicles were entering residential areas at 1 or 2 in the morning with loaded firearms and burglary tools. As a result of these stops, we have also apprehended individuals wanted for more serious crimes such as kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon.

"But in addition to helping us identify these threats entering our community, the data collected by the cameras also helps us investigate cases. We have solved numerous residential and commercial burglary cases, using vehicle descriptions such as year, make and model, or a partial plate, coupled with a location. We have located at least three domestic violence suspects using historical data to understand where the suspects' vehicles have previously been seen."

Fenner concludes, "The system has been a tremendous force multiplier for our department, and is helping us not only reduce – but prevent crime. Based on our success, we are in the process of expanding the system to further secure our community giving our residents confidence and sending a signal to criminals that they will be caught if they try to bring crime into our community."

For more information visit Visit www.vigilantsolutions.com.