The Police Department seeks to upgrade its License Plate Reader technology by migrating to a new state-of-the-art platform from Flock Safety. For more than a decade, the Riviera Beach Police Department has leveraged Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) technology to effectively identify vehicles, and subsequently their drivers, involved in the commission of a crime. The availability of this resource has consistently produced investigatory leads directly resulting in the identification and conviction of numerous criminal actors within our City. In addition to crime suppression activities, the ALPR System is also credited with locating numerous missing and/or endangered individuals. ALPR technology compliments other crime fighting technologies such as ShotSpotter, security cameras, as well as other database systems maintained in the Real-Time Crime Center.
As with all technology systems, the capabilities of modern ALPR offerings now greatly exceed those of our 10+ year old system. Features such as AI vehicle analytics and behavioral pattern identification would greatly increase our capabilities by allowing us to directly search for vehicles based on witness descriptions, which rarely include the complete vehicle descriptions or license plate information. Our current provider does not provide such features, and it would require a substantial infrastructure investment on our part to develop that capability with the current product. As a result, for approximately the last two years, the Police Department has been actively evaluating competing products through product trials and comparing to both our current system and to each other’s offerings.
Flock Safety has emerged as the overall best value for our needs. Flock Safety provides the advanced analytics we desire along with a subscription based service model that requires no infrastructure investment on our part. Each of their ALPR cameras covers at least two lanes of traffic versus the single lane of our current system. The Flock System identifies vehicles not only via their license plates, but also allows an investigator to search via make, model, color and/or other vehicle characteristics.
Flock Safety has proposed a fixed 27-camera ALPR deployment. This would provide almost four times the coverage our current seven fixed camera locations while also adding the numerous updated recognition capabilities. The annual cost per camera is $2500 with a one-time $250 installation fee. This amounts to a first year cost of $74,250 with an ongoing annual cost of $67,500. All pricing is based on the terms of a Polk County Sheriff’s Office competitive RFP, which was awarded to Flock Safety. The Riviera Beach Police Department currently budgets $50,000 for annual maintenance of our current ALPR system which would be used to offset the annual costs of the proposed subscription. For an additional $17,500 annually, the City will essentially receive four times the coverage times area and greatly increased vehicle recognition/search abilities.
The initial term of the Agreement is one year, and renews for subsequent one-year periods. The City can terminate the Agreement at the end of any one-year period.