Milan PD making streets safer

MILAN, N.M. – Years in the making, the Village of Milan Police Department is upgrading their equipment to make the streets safer. In just the last few months, proactive policing by the MPD has led to the arrest of several individuals, with officer going to extraordinary lengths to see justice done. In 2018 then MPD Chief Melecio “Pat” Salazar began an initiative to cover the area around Milan Elementary School with cameras that would be able to locate stolen vehicles and determine if a sexual predator was in the area. The Village of Milan Board of Trustees unanimously approved the purchase of the cameras, which have successfully identified multiple stolen vehicles. With Chief Carl Ustupski in the reigns, MPD is preparing to set up the third installment of these cameras in the village.

The cameras MPD has around the village do not store photos or take photos of people. The cameras exclusively take photos of license plates, run them through a national system, and determine if the vehicle is stolen or belongs to a sexual predator.

When the camera finds a license plate belonging to a stolen vehicle it snaps a photo of the plate and sends it to MPD. Officers receive the photo and will run it again to be sure the car is stolen before taking action. When in a school zone, if a plate is determined to belong to a registered sex offender, MPD will also be alerted.

MPD’s Sergeant Joe Galindo would not say where exactly the cameras were located in the village, but that the system has helped MPD be more proactive in their policing.

“The system draws off of the NCIC – the National Crime Information Center,” Sgt. Galindo said, explaining that the NCIC includes stolen property like cars. In just the last month MPD has identified five stolen vehicles thanks to the cameras. Sgt. Galindo explained that not every hit that comes up is necessarily for a stolen vehicle.

Sgt. Galindo recalled a time when MPD identified an allegedly stolen vehicle, but when they went to investigate and pulled the vehicle over, it was being driven by the registered owners. The owners were an elderly couple that had their vehicle stolen by family members, and when it was returned, they hadn’t alerted the police that the car was recovered.

Sgt. Galindo explained that MPD has made contact with several of the vehicles they identify as stolen, but some of them make their way onto the interstate before MPD can catch up with them.

How does it work?

The camera scans license plates and reads them to ensure that they are not in the National Crime Information System. It does not take photos of every single license plate that passes by, only the ones which come up as stolen.

The only information stored by MPD is what is sent to the police station from the system to help identify potentially stolen vehicles. The system does not take photos of any person’s face or body, only the license plate of a car. In the email received by the police station, they will also receive the registration information associated with the plate.

In the State of New Mexico there is no expectation of privacy for a license plate, allowing the camera to take photos of the plate when it is believed to be stolen.

This system is beneficial to the MPD, Sgt. Galindo explained, because the village is just off Interstate 40. If an amber alert were to go off and the vehicle listed on the alert is seen by the system, MPD will know the second they pass one of the cameras.

MPD does take additional steps to verify that the vehicle is stolen before making stopping the vehicle to ensure that it is stolen.

Technological advancements

Before former Chief Salazar began his work at MPD in late 2017, the Village of Milan Police Department was operating like any office in the 90’s: Paper, paper, paper.

This was unacceptable to the chief, who began the process of modernizing the department by bringing in computers, digitizing old records, and bringing in new policies for better transparency to the department like body cameras, a move MPD made before state law mandated cameras for all police.

Part of this modernization included bringing new cruisers to MPD’s fleet.

Chief Ustupski is following in the former chief’s steps by bringing proactive policing to the department. Overseeing the installment of more cameras, working to bring new drone surveillance capabilities to better respond to crime and disasters; not just in the village but through Cibola County, and he is working to increase MPD’s impaired driver enforcement.

Pushback

The American Civil Liberties Union expressed concern in a statement about MPD’s cameras, saying, “License plate readers like those manufactured by Flock Safety impact the privacy of New Mexico residents and all people driving through our communities,” the statement reads, “Any time law enforcement agencies are considering implementing these devices, they must seek advanced public input and give community members an opportunity to de cide if they want them in their neighborhoods. After all, this technology does not merely collect data on license plates.” The ACLU statement continued, “It allows law enforcement to search the system for specific makes and colors of cars, can be used to target neighborhoods where people of color predominately live, and can lead to indiscriminate tracking of residents in the absence of legislative limits on their use.”

In response, Sgt. Galindo explained, “This camera detects license plates and takes a picture of the car. It isn’t looking for the make, age, color, and it doesn’t know who’s driving the car.” Sgt. Galindo said that the camera does not take any photos that could identify the driver, because that is not the point of the system. “All the system does is pull up the license plate number and the registration information of the driver… We have our own protocol; we want to verify we’re not violating anybody’s civil rights.” He quipped that the Village of Milan is largely diverse, and so is the MPD team.

Sgt. Galindo said that with this system, MPD can better track illicit traffic flow in the village, and that because of the access to I-40, it can help keep the village and its residents safe.