In a Monday afternoon news conference, U.S. Senator Jerry Moran announced a $132,000 grant to help the Great Bend Police Department fund its license plate reading camera program.

“At a time when there are those who want to defund the police, I thought it was better to try to fund the police and law enforcement with greater support,” Moran said, addressing those gathered in the Great Bend Events Center’s Fort Zarah Room. “We want to do so in a way that increases the chances that not only our officers are safe, but the communities that they serve, are safer.”

“It’s not about speeding or stop signs” he joked. “This technology helps the police department here apprehend the criminals. We’re going to continue to try to find ways in which we can make certain that money that’s going to be spent somewhere gets spent in Kansas, and that gets spent wisely, particularly in our rural law enforcement offices.”

“I meet routinely with (Barton County) Sheriff Brian Bellendir, the county attorney and the other chiefs of police in Barton County,” said Police Chief Steve Haulmark. “One of the things we talked about was license plate reader technology and that’s it’s a big deal right now.”

How it works

The system will communicate with hundreds of other cameras throughout Kansas so a  wanted person’s movements can be tracked statewide. He cited two cases in the past couple years, a burglary at Mind Sculpt Games and the Credit Union ATM was damaged and burglarized, and both were solved through license plate readers used by surrounding agencies.

“This is for deterring and investigating active criminal investigations,” he said. If there is a stolen vehicle, an Amber Alert or Silver Alert, local officers will be notified if there is a hit on a plate.

“The Kansas Department of Transportation in 2020 advised that there were over 18,000 vehicles a day entering Great Bend,” he said. “We know their not all citizens of our city. And certainly some of those people are engaged in criminal activity and we want to identify them and get them out here.”

In addition, he said this system will alert nationally to any plate listed in the National Crime Information Center database.

“We’re we did a lot of homework,” he said, adding they were starting a pilot program here tapping Special Law Enforcement Trust Fund, made up of seized assets. Now, “these (new) monies will allow us to expand that program and then maintain it for several years going forward so that we’re not going to our governing bodies asking for monies to do that.”

System details

In addition to the up-front cost of the equipment and software, there is an annual subscription fee. The grant will be enough to keep the program going for at least five years.

In the initial phase, they are planning on 12 cameras that will cover the five main entry points into the city. There is a chance they might expand this a little.

“We might not catch everybody,” he said. But, it will help.

The software system will immediately send out an alert, so it won’t have to be constantly monitored. The information is also stored in the cloud for a period of time should they need to go back and conduct investigations.

Haulmark said Hoisington and Ellinwood are planning on installing cameras as well. “So we’d like to be able to go back to the council next year probably and share some of our early successes so that they can see that unequivocally this is a benefit.”

Since the cameras will be installed along state highways, Haulmark said they have already received permits from the Kansas Department of Transportation. They hope to have the first of the devices in place by the end of March.

Border security

“Recently, I was at the U.S.-Mexico border near El Paso and then in New Mexico,” Moran said. Sure, he said there may be problems with people coming to the United States, taking their jobs and abusing the system, but there are other issues as well.

“From my perspective, the greatest threat we have from what’s taking place on our borders are people who cross the border, particularly related to fentanyl, and other drugs, human trafficking and also terrorism. And so while we want to be helpful to local law enforcement in protecting their systems, in a broader national sense we need to make certain that there is more security, more difficulty for people to illegally come to the United States.”

The challenge has been finding any kind of bipartisan consensus on how to do that. If this could be done, “the country would be significantly better off and we’d all be more safe and secure.”

Drugs are a huge problem, Moran said. “It is huge sums of money so that law enforcement faces tremendous challenges.”

While efforts like the cameras can help local law enforcement and better border security can help as well, Americans need to curb their appetite for illegal drugs, he said. 

Moran was on a multi-day swing through western Kansas. He left Great Bend for similar event with the Dodge City Police Department.