It was a case so sensational, it was profiled on A&E: Tyrone Hassel III of St. Joseph Township, Michigan, a sergeant in the U.S. Army, gunned down in his father’s driveway on New Year’s Eve. His wife, Kemia Hassel, suspected of orchestrating the killing, and her lover, Jeremy Cuellar, of carrying it out. But Cuellar, on active duty at Fort Stewart in Georgia, swore he hadn’t been in Michigan at the time.
Video – both the LPR kind and, importantly, video from private commercial sources – told a different tale.
“He said he’d never left the base. What we proved, through LPR and commercial data, was that he did,” recalled Jose Patino, then a sergeant with the Michigan State Police who was involved with the investigation. “We saw him leave Atlanta. We saw him northbound. We saw him ramping off at the exit where we just happened to have the homicide, and then we saw him back southbound. When we have all that, you can’t say your car never left, right?”
That wasn’t all that solved the case, but it was a big component. And it was the ability of law enforcement in Michigan to obtain and integrate that commercial imaging data into their investigation that helped seal the deal.
“We saw him leaving, at the scene of the crime and everywhere in between,” Patino added. “Obviously there were other forensics involved, but without that commercial data, we couldn’t have gotten a conviction.”
Facing the evidence against him, Cuellar pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced in 2019 to 65–90 years in prison. Kemia Hassel was convicted of premeditated first-degree murder and got life.
COMMERCIAL DATA CLOSES THE GAP
License plate recognition (LPR) systems are often referred to as a “force multiplier,” adding not only 24/7 eyes to key traffic locations but often mobile scanning to officers’ vehicles. They can identify hotlisted vehicles and others of interest even as cops tend to other business.
That’s all enormously valuable – but it’s really just a start. Beyond municipal LPR systems, businesses and other civilian entities increasingly have their own video from their parking lots and properties that can be just as crucial to solving crimes.
“With fewer police officers out there, there aren’t as many mobile readers in cars floating around, so that’s less overall data,” said Patino, who recently retired from MSP and now serves as director of customer success for law enforcement at Insight LPR, a Texas-based provider of advanced LPR solutions. “So how do you close that gap and still give police officers the data they need to solve crimes? You do that through commercial data – partnering up with the private world.”
Insight LPR’s system – which includes MX Defender cameras and the new MX Guardian software – was developed with an open approach that facilitates that kind of collaboration and more. Third-party cameras can be integrated into Insight LPR’s system, and Insight LPR cameras and data into others. It can integrate with numerous surveillance and recognition platforms, as well as popular case management systems. And it can uniquely leverage the data from both law enforcement and commercial sources. All of this is done expeditiously with less manual reconciliation of data, fewer clicks and fewer panes of glass.
“That commercial piece is really a differentiator for us,” said Stephen Nethery, who heads sales and business development for the company. “A lot of commercial-type entities are buying into LPR for various reasons and putting up fixed cameras – retailers, HOAs, apartment buildings, office buildings. There’s growing use in the real estate field. And we also sell mobile cameras to the repossession industry – they take these mobile kits out scanning and collect a lot of data. It’s revolutionized their ability to find cars. So all that data is also super rich and valuable when it comes to law enforcement. A city’s fixed camera might tell you which direction a bad guy is headed, but commercial data may tell you where they’ve parked, where they’re hanging out and where they’re sleeping at night.”
Valuable as it is, that data isn’t always easy to integrate among the vast amounts harvested by law enforcement’s own fixed and mobile cameras. Doing so streamlines and simplifies crimefighting efforts significantly for overworked departments.
“There are law enforcement users who have to log into one system to get fixed-camera data and another to get commercial mobile data,” Nethery added. “We bring both of those worlds together.”
The cloud-based MX Guardian software facilitates sorting millions of records to identify vehicles of interest, notifying users in near-real time when it finds a hit. Agnostic to camera brands, it identifies vehicles’ make, vehicle type, color and state; permits full and partial plate searches and live-view event monitoring; and alerts to hits within seconds via email and text, including on mobile devices. Machine learning constantly updates the system’s capabilities.
MX Defender cameras provide highly accurate imaging of vehicles across multiple lanes at highway speeds – imaging shown superior in both quantity and quality when the Michigan State Police compared it to a competitor’s.
“What we did in Kalamazoo was put the Insight LPR camera along with another company’s camera at the same intersection, pointing in the same direction, and had images taken at the same exact time,” explained Patino. “I’d known we weren’t capturing all the cars – I’d park next to the camera with a clicker and count 100 cars going through and then see 75 on our reports. And since then they’ve determined the other camera on that pole is not getting the number of reads the Insight camera is.”
Beyond capturing more vehicles, Insight LPR’s system also simply produced better images, especially after dark. The company has further documented that difference through a series of formal tests.
“We pride ourselves on producing the best nighttime images,” Nethery said. “That’s a frustration law enforcement often experiences – their cameras work great during the day, but in low-light settings the plates get washed out. So that goes back to the quality of our design and camera. It’s well engineered, and it performs well at night.”
“If you have 10 cars going through, there’s a good chance we’re getting all 10,” Patino added. “If not, we’re going to get at least nine of them, and you’ll have accurate reads from those.”
SOLAR CAMERA SOLVES INFRASTRUCTURE PROBLEMS
A newer addition to Insight LPR’s product line extends those capabilities to areas where infrastructure may have previously prevented them. The MX Defender S camera is solar-powered, meaning it can be set up rapidly even in remote areas, not requiring extensive engineering or an external power supply. Driven by the MX Guardian software the company introduced concurrently earlier this summer, it offers the same alerting, search and integration capabilities, as well as the same advanced imaging and nighttime performance.
“The infrastructure side of [establishing fixed LPR networks] can be a struggle, whether it’s power at a location or you’re dealing with a permit process,” noted Patino. “That’s where solar solutions can come into play. You don’t have to pull power to freeway sites, which can cost thousands before you even touch the cameras.”
Also uniquely, Insight LPR can offer solar panels in various wattages depending on a user’s location. These charge batteries that power operations through low-light conditions.
“Up here in Michigan during the winter, I might not see the sun for 45 days, so a 45-watt panel probably isn’t going to do too much for me,” Patino said. “Whether there are clouds or not, you have to charge that battery to get you through the night. So a place like Kalamazoo may need a little bit bigger panel for its winters.”
Winters in places like Kalamazoo can be daunting, but the MX Defender and MX Defender S are durable (made from military-grade aluminum and IP68-rated) and can withstand temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit). The company also offers a high level of support in the rare event of problems.
“That’s where Insight LPR really separates itself,” said Patino. “When you call support, you’re going to know our guy running that, and he’s going to know who you are. He’s probably talked to you 10 times already. He’ll call and check in with you, and he’s not in sales, so he’s not worried about the next sale or anything like that. He’s worried about what’s good for you and how things are working.”
A MUCH SAFER COMMUNITY
Insight LPR has numerous other success stories from the 1,000-plus jurisdictions it covers, including big headlines like recovering missing children, homicide arrests and large drug busts. It’s also helped resolve countless smaller crimes. With improved images in all conditions and the integration of commercial data, it becomes the proverbial force multiplier departments seek and then some.
“Imagine a scenario where a community goes all in on LPR – law enforcement, the auto finance and repo folks, residential and commercial real estate owners, they all have cameras up,” said Nethery. “When they’re all collecting reads and hits and sending them to law enforcement to help take bad guys off the street, you’re going to see a much safer community.”
For more information, visit Insight LPR.
