By Pepper Fisher

PORT ANGELES – Did you know that some of our Sheriff’s vehicles have automatic license plate readers, or ALPRs?

Chief Criminal Deputy Amy Bundy says the Sheriff’s Office installed two vehicle mounted ALPR units in two Deputy vehicles thanks to funding from a Homeland Security Grant in response to the recent rise in motor vehicle thefts. She says they’ve already recovered 3 stolen vehicles in that time.

“I did check in with one of the deputies, he’s working today, who has his activated, and he uses it regularly. And one of the things that he highlighted was that he uses it daily to track plates, and he can easily go back and reference plates that he might have missed. Because it’s logged historically. So, if he was in an area and something caught his attention, but he has to go to another call, he can go back and review the License Plate Reader data to determine if there is anything of interest on those plates that he might have already passed by.”

The latest vehicle recovered Sunday in the Gales Addition neighborhood in Port Angeles. The Sheriff’s Office reports that at about 4:45pm, a deputy was in the process of recovering a stolen vehicle on Ennis Creek Road when the deputy’s automated license plate reader alerted them that a stolen vehicle had just driven by.

The deputy broadcasted that a stolen white 1999 Chevy Blazer was westbound toward the City of Port Angeles. The vehicle was spotted and then stopped soon after.

The driver was identified as 39-year-old Port Angeles resident, Gypsy Hendricks. Investigators found that the vehicle had been stolen in a residential burglary in Kitsap County on June.

She was booked for possession of a stolen vehicle and possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver.

Bundy says spotting stolen vehicles is not the only thing the ALPRs are good for.

“And the other thing that it will capture is Amber Alerts, as well as Silver Alerts. When those go out, we often times will get those over email. In the past, dispatchers received what’s called a teletype, notifying us of those. This is a much more effective tool for getting real-time information on anybody we should be checking on.”

Bundy says the new technology is working so well that she was told the Port Angeles Police Department is looking into getting some of their own.