COCHISE COUNTY, Ariz. (KGUN) — Sierra Vista has become the latest Cochise County city to install license plate readers, expanding a surveillance network that has been in place across the county for years. Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels says the cameras are a valuable tool for locating missing people and tracking criminals, but some members of the public are raising privacy concerns about their use.
Dannels says the cameras capture pictures of license plates on passing vehicles. When searching for a missing person or a suspect, the sheriff's office can check whether a specific vehicle has passed through the area and use that data to determine a location.
Dannels pointed to a recent case involving a missing juvenile as an example of the technology in action.
"We just used them on a juvenile from the Sierra Vista area that we took a case where she went missing, and that helped us locate where she was at and safely returned," he said.
The sheriff described the readers as a modern extension of traditional police work.
"It's a modern technological crime-fighting tool. It really is traditional police work...but having technology in a cyber world that we live in, we live in a video game. So we got to make sure we're competing at that video game, too," Dannels said.
On the question of privacy protections, Dannels said the responsibility falls on law enforcement to follow strict internal guidelines.
"Just like any technology that we have, it's up to us in law enforcement to make sure that we have the disciplines, policies, procedures and structure, that we don't violate them," Dannels said.
Dannels said vendors who fail to follow those procedures will lose the county's business.
"If they violate our system. We're done with them. We're done with them because I can't trust them no more, and that's the biggest thing," Dannels said.
The sheriff pushed back against arguments that the cameras should be removed from public streets, drawing a distinction between body cameras worn by officers and cameras placed in public spaces.
"It's okay to have a camera on the chest of the men and women that serve this office, but we don't want them on our public streets. I have an issue with that. This is public," Dannels said.
Dannels said eliminating the cameras is not an option, given the role they have played in improving public safety across the county, including catching a high-profile wanted man.
“The county attorney that was just apprehended for the sexual offenses here in Cochise County. He was caught off our cameras. That's how we knew, that's how we brought him in to custody up on I-10, because we spotted him on our cameras as he came back into the county," Dannels said. "We waited for him, and we took him into custody safely, because we had the resources to do it smart.”
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
----
——-
Alexis Ramanjulu is a reporter in Cochise County for KGUN 9. She began her journalism career reporting for the Herald/Review in Sierra Vista, which she also calls home. Share your story ideas with Alexis by emailing alexis.ramanjulu@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook.
