A newly tricked-out squad car from the St. Joseph Department of Public Safety is raising a few eyebrows and turning a few heads, but lest you think that the communities police officers are spying on your every move the reality is they only want to make sure you’re not violating the city’s recently enhanced parking regulations.
If you look closely at the photo accompanying this story on Moody on the Market.com you will see that there are a number of add-on devices that make it look like a futuristic robo-squad-car or something similar. The photo is courtesy of the City of St. Joe.
St. Joseph City Manager John Hodgson says the squad is the city’s new Parking Enforcement Vehicle and is manned by St. Joe Public Safety Parking Enforcement Officer Buzz Holmes.
The city’s public safety Facebook page defines the new plan for you:
“City of St. Joseph has implemented a new technology to enhance parking enforcement and reduce complaints of illegal parking. A patrol car has been equipped with specialized lasers and cameras which can detect vehicles that are parked illegally. This vehicle will be used to enforce parking violations both in timed parking spaces and permit parking areas.”
The new vehicle greatly enhances Holmes’ productivity and efficiency, affording him the opportunity to canvass the entire city including parks, the central business district and beyond more quickly.
Hodgson says the squad car has been operating around the city for a couple of weeks now and he knows that it is drawing some stares and raising a few questions, but the system is a great help to the city’s parking enforcement plan which utilizes the new “autoChalk” software, as opposed to Holmes’ former task of walking endlessly to physically place chalk marks on automobile tires to determine who is over-staying the time limits in restricted parking zones.
The new vehicle sports a couple of lasers on the roof, a radar detector, four cameras mounted on the back, and the “autoChalk” computer system.
The city says that by utilizing GPS tracking, photographs and the license plate recognition elements of the software, the on board officer can quickly identify those who have violated the parking regulations and produce an automatic ticket for the offender which is then placed onto the vehicle.
Hodgson says when the city went to “pay by plate” for parking at the beach and fountain lots this year, this vehicle became indispensable as the squad car cameras read the plates and cross reference to assure they haven’t exceeded time limits, or if the parked vehicle is registered for daily or season passes.
So…if you see the newly enhance squad car tooling around town…it’s not science fiction — it’s science fact, and whenever you park in a time-restricted lot or zone…you are being watched from time to time.
