OGDEN — The Ogden Police Department is looking to expand its use of a technology that provides continuous, high-speed monitoring of vehicles in select areas in the city.

The department will soon beef up its automated license plate recognition operation, according to Ogden Deputy Police Chief Eric Young, adding 20 cameras equipped with the technology inside of the city’s “Project Safe Neighborhoods” zone — an area that starts at 12th Street from the north and runs to 36th Street in the south. The eastern limit of the area is Monroe Boulevard and runs to Wall Avenue as the western barrier.

The enforcement area also includes a small patch of South Ogden, 21st Street going west and ending at 1900 West in Weber County. In total, the area covers 5 square miles where more than 22,000 people live.

Young said the department put out requests for proposals for the initiative and ultimately selected a company called Flock Safety to help carry out the program expansion. The effort will be funded entirely through federal PSN and Justice Assistance grants. The grants will also fund the maintenance of the program for four years.

The technology, which recognizes characters on images to read license plates and subsequently identify a location for the associated vehicle, has numerous applications, Young said. The OPD will use the technology for Amber alerts, stolen vehicle alerts, wanted fugitive alerts, hit-and-run accidents, fraud, forgery and theft investigations, traffic studies and for investigation leads on all types of crime.

Ogden Police Chief Randy Watt said since he became chief in 2017, the readers have been one of the best ways to deal with career criminals and habitual offenders — a sentiment echoed by Young.

“These persons we’re working to remove from the community … are long-term repeat offenders,” Young said. “Not first-time offenders, not low-level drug offenders. These are high-level, violent offenders.”

But the technology has been criticized as a state-sanctioned invasion of privacy. In 2012, the OPD was one of three state law enforcement agencies targeted by the Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union with records requests seeking information about their use of the technology. The ACLU has said the technology has the potential to create permanent records on virtually anyone who leaves their house in a vehicle, opening up many opportunities for abuse.

“The tracking of people’s location constitutes a significant invasion of privacy,” the ACLU said in a July 2013 report on license plate recognition. “Which can reveal many things about their lives, such as what friends, doctors, protests, political events, or churches a person may visit.”

But during a Tuesday discussion on the topic, Young assured the Ogden City Council the police department’s internal policies and state law prohibit potential abuse of the technology. Young said the cameras in question won’t read plates on private properties, but only on public streets or other public places. He also emphasized that it won’t ever be used for non-criminal investigations.

He said data associated with the technology can only be preserved for nine months, unless investigators obtain a warrant from a judge.

“We do have a very strict policy,” Young said. “The data can only be used for protecting public safety, conducting criminal investigations (and) ensuring compliance with … laws.”

Young said the technology is widely used across the United States, especially in metropolitan areas and noted that Ogden has used it since 2009. He said OPD’s program will be audited every year to ensure compliance with OPD policy and state law.