I don’t know what the statistics are for stolen license plates but it seems to me, here in the San Francisco Bay Area anyway, that whenever there’s a recorded incident of a robbery or assault where the perpetrators used a getaway car, in all likelihood they put stolen plates on the car.
One way to fight crime in San Francisco and Oakland is to analyze cars crossing the toll plaza
and use image recognition methods to match the car’s make and model to the license plate information. I bet data science techniques can easily reveal and discover patterns of criminal activity. Fighting crime by checking objects, not suspects.
It’s cute you think they haven’t been doing that for years. I live in the Bay Area and my city track every single vehicle that enters or exists the city limits.
But why steal plates when you can steal the entire car?
Don’t give the public sector too much credit when it comes to using data. They don’t do analytics. It’s still eyeballs on a live monitor. That’s not data science. While they have tons of data, they have to pay for a company like Palantir. If they’re willing.
Your anecdote about tracking for years, it’s street webcams from Fry’s Electronics using 640 x 480 video resolution. They’re starting to change it to 1080p. Meanwhile we Zoom using 2K and 4K cams. So tell me more about your city?
One way to fight crime in San Francisco and Oakland is to analyze cars crossing the toll plaza and use image recognition methods to match the car’s make and model to the license plate information. I bet data science techniques can easily reveal and discover patterns of criminal activity. Fighting crime by checking objects, not suspects.