Soap Lake to get surveillance cameras, plate readers

by Richard Byrd
| April 7, 2017 4:00 AM

SOAP LAKE — Soap Lake residents will soon be seeing surveillance cameras and license plate readers strategically placed around the city, as the city council approved a motion to enter into an agreement with a company to bring 10 cameras and four license plate readers to Soap Lake.

The council moved to enter into a 60-month agreement with Huntleigh USA Corporation for 10 security cameras, plus four license plate readers, to the tune of $30,500 a year, plus a one-time installation fee of up to $6,000. Because the cameras will be strategically placed around the city to monitor city assets such as water and sewer facilities, 50 percent of the funds for the cameras and system will come out of the city’s water fund, 20 percent will come from the sewer fund and 30 percent will come from the general fund.

Soap Lake Police Department Chief Ryan Cox said Huntleigh employees will be watching the videos 24/7 from their dispatch center in Las Vegas.

“All of their staff are trained in elements of a crime. So if they observe an element of a crime, they can actually call the officer on-duty and state ‘hey, you have something going on right here,’” Cox told the council. “If they (the dispatch center) call us we can actually pull it up live feed on our work phones or on our laptops while we are responding to the area and be able to know what is going on in the situation before we even get there.”

Cox said the SLPD will be giving the Grant County Sheriff’s Office, which already has a contract in place with Huntleigh for security cameras around the county, access to the city’s 10 cameras. In turn, Cox said, the sheriff’s office will be giving the SLPD access to the cameras they have placed in the Lakeview area.

The strategic placement of the pan-tilt-zoom cameras will allow the police department to keep an eye on several problem areas around the city, including the schools, beaches and parks. The system also comes with facial recognition capability, which Cox noted is not for reading and cataloging every person who comes into view of a camera in the city. Rather, Cox said, the feature is for identifying a suspect via their face and the system instantly recognizing their face if they come into view of another camera.

“This is not a system to watch people’s houses,” Cox assured the council and audience. “There are laws against that. And everything is kept for 30 days, unless we evidence log it and then it is kept forever. The server will be held here (at City Hall).”

One councilmember was not too thrilled about the possibility of constant surveillance in the city. Councilmember John Glassco acknowledged the benefits of the technology in keeping Soap Lake residents safe and in the determent of crime, but he said he is still in favor of traditional policing. Glassco voiced concern about the facial recognition software and the overall scope of the many abilities of the cameras and software.

Addressing Cox, Glassco stated, “The other thing that I thought was disturbing is the endless possibilities of surveillance. You made that statement about the endless possibilities. Because this is such an open-ended system, you could technically track everybody in town. All of their comings and goings.”

Glassco was not able to persuade the rest of the council to vote against bringing the cameras to the city, as he was the sole vote against the measure. The actual contract with Huntleigh will be brought back to the council at a future council meeting for final approval.

Richard Byrd can be reached via email at city@columbiabasinherald.com.