Beloit council approves application for grant to add four license-plate readers on West Side

The Beloit City Council voted to allow the Beloit Police Department to apply for a Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) to add four license-plate readers at one West Side intersection.

A Beloit Police Department representative told the council the department was selected as one of 26 Wisconsin cities to receive a noncompetitive grant of $21,857 for license-plate readers. “This would go into the same system that we currently use for our other license plate readers,” the representative said.

The police representative said the four readers would cover every lane of an intersection and are being sited using crime data to track routes used in violent crimes. “We, don't use it for low level crime and stuff, so we strictly use it for, the violent crime in the city,” the representative said, and cited a prior successful case where newly installed readers helped identify suspects in bank robberies across state lines.

According to the presentation, the grant excludes capture of a vehicle’s make, model, color or other distinguishing attributes; the devices will record the plate and typically the rear of the vehicle, then verify plates against the Department of Transportation system. The council discussed the item during the consent-agenda portion after Councilor Forbeck asked for the item to be pulled for explanation.

A motion to approve resolution 2025008, authorizing the police department to apply for the JAG license-plate readers grant, passed on council voice vote. The transcript records the motion passing but does not list a roll-call tally in the meeting record.

The grant application, if awarded, would add the four readers to the city’s existing license-plate reader system and does not, according to the department, change existing restrictions on the type of vehicle information collected.