In the wake of the 2022 mass shooting at Oakbrook Center, Oak Brook police put up more license plate reader cameras across the village, and this week the department gave NBC 5 a rare look at how officers use the technology every day.
“Is there anywhere you can go in Oak Brook that you’re not going to be tracked by a license plate reader?” NBC 5’s Rose Schmidt asked Chief Brian Strockis.
“No, we have almost 100 license plate reader cameras in eight square miles,” Strockis said.
If a car linked to a crime enters or leaves Oak Brook, his officers know about it. Cameras from three different systems, Flock, Minuteman and Vigilant Solutions, cover the entrances and exits of nearly every subdivision, plus Oakbrook Center.
“Village President Larry Herman said … ‘any municipality that’s taking down their license plate readers, we’ll send a truck and pick them up and put them up and use them appropriately’ because they’ve been that effective for us,” Strockis said.
As for whether the recent shooting at the mall would have been solved without the cameras, the chief said their use absolutely helped their investigation.
“I think it certainly streamlined the process. It sped things up, not only in that case but in so many others,” he said.
In that shooting at the mall on Sept. 30, DuPage County prosecutors said 29-year-old Chance Jamerson helped set up three people to be robbed, and a man working with her ended up being shot and killed.
The chief also points to other cases, including the abduction of a 7-year-old in August. Officers used the cameras to track the little girl from Oak Brook to a Chicago apartment, where she was found safe.
“That family was incredibly appreciative. Every minute that goes by without your child probably feels like an eternity, and without that technology, it would have taken a lot longer than four hours to return that child safely to her foster parents,” Strockis said.
In a separate case from August, the chief said a mall employee was being stalked, and once again the technology proved useful.
“We were able to use license plate readers as a trigger to notify officers that ‘Hey, this person is in the area,’ when there’s a court order preventing that,” Strockis said.
However, privacy concerns remain about the cameras. NBC 5 has previously reported that lawmakers in Springfield are pushing for more guardrails after cases in which prosecutors say officers made unauthorized searches.
Robert Berlin, the DuPage County state’s attorney, announced this month that a former Itasca police officer and a former West Chicago police officer have been charged with misusing their authority to make unauthorized searches.
“We charge them with official misconduct. So, officers do need to be held accountable for misusing the technology. But the technology itself is absolutely making community safer,” Berlin said.
His office said in the first six months of the year, of the 400 forcible felonies prosecutors charged, 126 used license plate reader technology, a rate of approximately 32%. .
Strockis said the cameras have also helped solve thefts, burglaries and hit-and-runs. He adds his department has not had a misuse case, but if an officer does run a plate too often, for example, the system will flag it.
“They should be prosecuted. They should be terminated. They should not be police officers if they use any system inappropriately,” Strockis said.
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