BUCKHANNON — Central West Virginia Aging Services has donated $25,000 to the Upshur County Sheriff’s Office to acquire more license plate readers that can assist in solving a variety of crimes, including those targeting the elderly.
Evelyn Post, executive director and CEO of Central West Virginia Aging Services Inc., presented the $25,000 check to Upshur County Sheriff Mike Coffman on Thursday, Oct. 17.
“When they reached out to our organization, we thought it was a wonderful project, and we wanted to partner with the Upshur County Sheriff’s Office to provide four additional cameras to be installed throughout Upshur County, so the money is specifically for the license plate readers,” Post said. “I believe they will help solve some of the crimes against the elderly. Those cameras are going to be strategically important in keeping our seniors safer, particularly in the rural areas where there’s limited law enforcement.”
Coffman said the county currently operates three license plate readers and the donation will provide the opportunity to purchase four more.
“The license plate readers pick up on what has been put in the National Crime Information Center; things like stolen vehicles, missing people, Silver Alerts and Amber Alerts have to be entered in the NCIC,” Coffman said. “The LPRs will pick up on license plates that have been reported stolen or are associated with another crime, or have another kind of status, and it sends us an alert. Then we have to go on and actually run the information to confirm it.”
Coffman emphasized the license plate readers are not tracking all vehicles.
“I just want people to know it’s not tracking you; it’s scanning every single car, but it doesn’t track you around the county,” Coffman said. “We’ve used it already to detect a stolen vehicle out of Ohio, we solved a pursuit with it on Route 33, and we’ve used it in a federal investigation with the assistance of the FBI, and those are the things I can name off top my head.”
He said the currently deployed license plate readers have received over one million reads in Upshur County.
“We have people who are targeting the elderly population with these scams, people who are coming in from other states to collect money and different things from elderly people,” Coffman said. “This helps us with that, because most of those vehicles are out of state. Businesses are partnering with us to catch the entrance next to their business in some areas, so we monitor that in case they have a retail theft that comes in or somebody vandalizes their business. If something were to happen at 2:30 a.m., we could go back to the LPR and get a picture of that vehicle at that time and place, so it’s a great asset for us.”
