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City leaders hope new license plate readers will help fight crime in Fishers

Posted at 9:53 PM, Jan 27, 2020
and last updated 2020-01-27 21:53:47-05

FISHERS — License plate readers will soon be scanning plates to help fight crime along a highly traveled road in Fishers.

City leaders are teaming up with a new fitness facility opening in a former Marsh store on 96th Street to purchase four license plate readers.

The cameras will cost $15,000 each and will alert officers to things like stolen cars, wanted suspects, and missing people.

Some residents like Paul Walker are on-board with the idea, especially since it won't cost taxpayers anything.

"It'll help if it prevents from more crime in the area and gives more safety to the neighborhood, I'm all for it," Paul Walker said.

The mayor required the developer of the new fitness facility to purchase the cameras.

"These businesses are community partners to us," Fishers Police Chief Edward Gebhart said. "So I think just in terms of them they want to be safe, want to make sure the area maintained, so they can have fruitful business. We want to maintain the area so we don't want crime to creep in."

While some people are all for the license plate readers being installed, others have privacy concerns.

"The big question is what are they going to do with that info, I don't know," Fishers resident Eldon McKenzie said.

Gebhart says it will work the same way as their current license plate readers mounted on police cars.

City leaders say they are working to determine where specifically the cameras will go and hope to have them installed within the year.