HAZLETON, Pa. — The City of Hazleton Police Department has more eyes and ears out on the streets now than ever. Only it's not officers, but rather cameras and noise detection sensors.
"We have the system telling us right off the bat sending us text messages and emails, hey this car, this color, picture of it is stolen, and it's coming into your City, and it's made everything simpler," said Chief Brian Schoonmaker, City of Hazleton Police Department.
Over the last 30 days, according to Chief Brian Schoonmaker, more than five million license plates have been captured on the Flock Falcon Fystem, this helps officers identify sex offenders and those wanted for crimes like hit and runs.
Now with the new Raven System, police officers hope to cut their response time in half when responding to crimes that involve gunshots.
"If there are gunshots in the area of any one of these cameras, all these cameras will start taking photographs in that specific area, so we may be able to solve a crime somewhat faster," explained Chief Schoonmaker.
Since installation began a few weeks ago, the Raven Gunshot Detection System has passed numerous tests that even Chief Schoonmaker didn't think were possible, "We tested it out for Fourth of July, and it had not picked up any of the fireworks, so that wasn't a problem, it's not picking up car backfirings or things like that. As far as we are concerned, we could say it's probably 100 percent for us at this moment."
Chief Schoonmaker says there are more than 180 devices for the Flock Safety System already spread throughout the city and surrounding communities.
He says the Raven Gunshot Detection technology will be up and running by the end of this week.
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