ICE to buy mobile license plate recognition system to find fugitive aliens

Fri, 2012-07-06 02:31 PM
By: Jacob Goodwin

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has decided to award a sole source contract to Vigilant Video, of Livermore, CA, to provide a mobile license plate recognition system and database that will enable ICE to find fugitive aliens by recording license plate numbers of moving cars and comparing those numbers with a “Hot List” of fugitive plates stored on a nationwide database.

ICE will pay Vigilant Video $24,591 for a base period plus four optional years because it has determined that the company is the only firm that can offer this required technology. “This is a unique requirement that is only available through Vigilant Video,” says a justification document prepared by ICE and released on July 5. “They have the only product capable of producing the data in the marketplace.”

The system will enable ICE to query plates issued to fugitive aliens in order to learn the geographic locations of those vehicles. Officers will be provided with an image of the fugitive’s vehicle.

ICE’s field office in Dallas, TX, has already been allowed to test the system, on a limited basis, free of charge. “The results have been exceptional accounting for approximately 100 arrests in a 6 month time period,” said the ICE notice. “Some of the cases that resulted in arrests were formally thought to be cold cases.”

The National Vehicle Location Services (NVLS) will be used as an investigative tool as part of ICE’s National Fugitive Operation Program.

“Surpassing the challenges of a national LPR database via NVLS, our future roadmap plans an extensive integration between LPR data and public records, a facial recognition platform, and ‘leaps and bounds’ expansion of LEARN which seamlessly ties together all data sources,” explains Vigilant Video on the company’s Website. “We are on schedule to provide the most advanced Law Enforcement criminal database loaded with billions of records -- a universal data system with one common goal in mind -- making it easier for Law Enforcement to ‘Catch the Bad Guy’.”

Further information is available from William Quigley at 202-732-2120 or william.quigley1@dhs.gov.

ICE to buy mobile license plate recognition system to find fugitive aliens | Government Security News