By Joe Jarosz
Northeast News
January 21, 2015

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Although crime statistics show the Northeast trending upwards to a safer community, crime does still exist.

And the Kansas City Police Department is doing everything possible to make sure those statistics keep trending in the right direction.That’s why last week, KCPD officers, with the assistance from Kansas City Power and Light and city public work crews, installed two additional cameras at the intersection of Independence and Prospect Avenues. Public Information Officer Jason Cooley said the two installed are license plate reader (LPR) cameras.

“They are the same as the LPR’s on the patrol vehicles, except they’re stationary,” Cooley said.

How the cameras work, is they capture the image of the license plate of a passing vehicle and compare the plate number to existing numbers in the police database. The cameras are mounted onto light poles looking downward, scanning vehicles that pass through the intersection. The area already has a dome camera mounted on the northwest corner of the intersection.

Cooley said the additional cameras are a response to the community’s involvement in deterring crime in the area. Captain Tye Grant with the KCPD media unit said the cameras were installed in this area to assist with efforts to reduce prostitution activity, “as well as overall area improvements.” Grant added there are no more plans to install additional cameras.

“Prostitution is a big issue in the area and having these cameras available will help us investigate that and other crimes that occur better,” Cooley said.

Leslie Caplan, Northeast resident and president of both the Scarrit Renaissance Neighborhood Association and the Northeast Alliance Together, said addressing safety in the Historic Northeast has to be a multi-faceted approach. She added that the eyes and ears of the neighborhood block watch programs and the work of the Avenue Angels are important, but they can only go so far.

“I think that having state of the art camera equipment [on Independence Avenue] will offer a whole different perspective and an additional resource to the police to make doing their jobs easier,” Caplan said. “I think this will help us all continue our efforts to eliminate the criminal element from our community.”