Those old-fashioned fuzz busters won’t work anymore. That’s because new technology is as prevalent as a police car on the side of the road, preventing drivers from escaping the long arm of the law. Many Georgia cities and counties, including those in the Northwest Georgia area, are using license readers to catch bad guys and those violating traffic offenses.
License plate readers started off by being installed on police cars. They can read a massive number of tags on moving and parked cars while the officer is driving, sometimes thousands in a couple of minutes.
However, automatic license readers (ALRs) have gone beyond installation on police vehicles. They can be mounted on light poles, highway overpasses, in school zones, or at a neighborhood’s entry. These are called Flock Safety ALPRs. Most cities and counties refer to all the tech, both stationary and those on police cars, as ALRs.
They are much more efficient than the original ALRs installed on police cars. The latest devices scan every plate and record the date, time, and GPS location.
An experiment by an Atlanta news channel allowed a reporter to look at two days of data gathered by the Georgia State Patrol in 2018. The ALRs scanned 274,617 license plates over the two-day period.
Local police and sheriff’s departments tout the devices as finding those with outstanding warrants, rescuing kidnapped children, and tracking a suspect from a crime scene to their hiding spot.
Yet, others complain the device evades privacy and is a money generator for cities and counties because they also report those speeding, driving uninsured, expired tag decals, and other minor but finable offenses.
Where Are They?
Drivers may be surprised at how many ALRs are in their communities and along their driving routes. The Georgia State Patrol has them along main highways and traffic arteries but small towns and communities are also using them.
Here is a list of cities and counties in Northwest Georgia that have installed ALRs.
Cherokee County is buying 35 ALR cameras with a $518,788 Community Public Safety Grant it received in 2023.
The City of Canton has its own ALRs that were approved by the Canton City Council in 2019. The city police department maintains them and also uses ALRs mounted on four patrol cars. It has three cameras with each capable of capturing 900 license plates a minute.
Woodstock operates seven cameras that store data for 30 days.
The City of Dallas is buying the cameras with a $260,343 Community Public Safety Grant it received in 2023.
Cobb County has been using ALS cameras installed by the Cobb County Police Department since 2019.
The City of Marietta has its ALR system operated by the Marietta Police Department. It was one of the first to go all-in on the tech buying ALRs for patrol cars in 2013 and adding the Flock Safety stationary ALPRs in 2018.
The City of Acworth began installing license plate readers in 2019 and scanned 546,422 license plates that year.
The City of Euharlee bought eight cameras in November 2024.
Cedartown has stationary and ALRs on police vehicles. Statistics show they scanned 153,523 license plates in 2019 using the automatic system.
Rockmart has three ALRs stationed along Rockmart-Cedartown Highway in the Highway 113 areas, according to reports.
The Walker County Sheriff’s Office plans on buying ALR cameras with a $558,698 Community Public Safety Grant it received in 2023. The cameras will be placed in the county’s highest 911 call areas.
Melody Dareing is a freelance writer working for publications in the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Germany. She is a former news director of Adelphia Channel 4 and WBHF Radio.