LUBBOCK, Texas – The city of Wolfforth is now considered a ‘target area’ for vehicle burglaries, according to Wolfforth Police Chief Rick Scott.
“I know for our citizens who work hard for their stuff how frustrating it is to have somebody who hasn’t worked for it come and take your stuff,” said Scott.
Scott says most of the suspects committing these crimes are juveniles.
“Based on our statistics during this stay at home pandemic, we’ve seen attemtpted vehicle burglaries go up,” said Scott.
That’s why the chief of 18 years penned an open letter to residents this week to inform them on what his department is doing to prevent car break-ins. One of those strategies is a license plate recognition system (LPR), which compares license plates in a criminal database.
“So if we had burglaires in a given area, we could pull up a list of vehicles that passed through that area during the specific time frame of that crime and look into those vehicles to see if they were involved in whatever crime it was,” said Scott.
Scott says the system, which can be mounted to a patrol unit or a stationary pole, won’t cost taxpayers an extra dime, as the department had already budgeted the system for the fiscal year.
With additional officers on patrol, Scott believes the city will see a decrease in burglaries soon.
“Rather than having 20 burglaries in a string or 30 or 40, it’s been limited to about two before one of our patrol officers intercepts what they were doing,” said Scott.
Scott hopes to have the LPR system implemented in the next two months.
