Wagoner Co. Sheriff's Office Tests Flock Cameras To Help Solve Crime

The Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office is testing cameras that can help fight crime by taking pictures of cars and loading them into a database.

Wagoner County is testing 10 tag-reading cameras to see if they help solve more crimes.

Other Green Country agencies are already using these cameras to make a lot of arrests and Wagoner County hopes their cameras will do the same.

The Flock cameras allow officers to get a real-time list of all the cars that might be driven by a suspect.

“So let's say we have a crime committed, and let's say we have a suspect vehicle description of a white Ford F-150,” said Wagoner County Sheriff Chris Elliott. “This system, we can go in and search that system, load in the time frames that we're looking for, and it will populate a list of every white Ford F-150 that breached those camera systems."

The cameras have already led to the arrest of several homicide and robbery suspects in Tulsa.

Tulsa Crime Stoppers said that these cameras allow officers to be in many places at once, in a time when the number of officers are lower.

“So the Flock cameras are just an additional tool that law enforcement agencies are using because of the numbers being so low that they can't be everywhere all the time," said Karen Gilbert with Tulsa Crime Stoppers.

Officers said they need help from the public when it comes to getting a good vehicle description and tag number, so that they can enter it into the database.

When it comes to AMBER alerts, they said this technology could be a game-changer.

"If we have an AMBER Alert, and we've got a suspect vehicle and a tag information that's entered into that, any time it breaches a Flock camera anywhere in the nation we're going to get notified of it," said Elliott.

These cameras can even help solve crimes that happen across state lines, because the database is shared across the country.

"It might not have been a crime here in Tulsa, but it might have been a crime that happened in Broken Arrow, it might have been a crime that happened in Owasso, or it might have been a crime that happened in Atlanta, Georgia,” said Gilbert. “It's going to alert the police that ‘hey, this car is wanted, this car has been involved in a crime, and here it is, it's right here for you."’

Law enforcement wants to remind people they aren’t using the cameras to catch speeders or anyone breaking traffic laws.