TACOMA, Wash. — It's not unusual for police departments to scan license plates to find criminals or stolen cars, but Tacoma wants to use the same technology to ticket parking violators.
“It’s a very simple technology. It’s a camera that attaches to (a parking enforcement officer’s) car,” said Kurtis Kingsolver with Tacoma Public Works.
It’s capable of catching dozens of parking violators a minute.
Not only do the cameras look for new offenders, but also for repeat offenders, or scofflaws, as they're called.
“If you look at the data, there's several million dollars in unpaid citations,” said Kingsolver.
The system costs an estimated $300,000 but could also rake in about half a million dollars in revenue a year.
PayLock makes one of the systems the city is looking at.
That program features booting cars that belong to repeat offenders.
For now, city officials say they're only considering scanning plates and not booting cars.
"Rather than hiring more staff, we could use this equipment to be more efficient in what we do,” said Kingsolver.
Tacoma officials said if the city buys the cameras, there would be a policy that the data would only be used to find parking violators.
KIRO
