Library outreach and license plate readers highlight City Commission Meeting

By John Chaney  | The Winchester Sun

WINCHESTER — Winchester City Commissioners heard updates Tuesday evening on two key com­mu­ni­ty resources: the pub­lic library’s grow­ing reach and the police department’s use of auto­mat­ic license plate readers.

Angela Turner of the Winchester-Clark County Public Library opened the pre­sen­ta­tions with a year-in-review packed with num­bers. The library cir­cu­lat­ed more than 276,000 dig­i­tal mate­ri­als and held over 93,000 dig­i­tal items. More than 39,000 peo­ple came through the doors or attend­ed events and book­mo­bile pro­grams. Staff deliv­ered over 14,000 books to chil­dren enrolled in the Dolly Parton Imagination Library and offered more than 1,600 pro­grams. Outreach teams still make 20 to 25 stops each week.

Turner zeroed in on the Dolly Parton pro­gram. Roughly 2,000 local chil­dren under age 5 are eli­gi­ble, yet only 59 per­cent cur­rent­ly par­tic­i­pate. “I want to chal­lenge all of you all to think of some­body that you know that has a child, grand­child, what­ev­er, that’s under age five and tell them about this pro­gram,” she said. Registration is sim­ple via QR code, online form or a quick stop at the library. More than 900 chil­dren have already grad­u­at­ed from the program.

She also high­light­ed the Library of Things, where card­hold­ers can bor­row fish­ing poles, bak­ing pans, blood pres­sure cuffs and pass­es to the children’s muse­um or Shaker Village. Commissioners praised the staff’s friend­li­ness, the clean children’s area and pop­u­lar pro­grams such as the seed library. City Commissioner Shannon Cox not­ed he nev­er com­plains about the library’s spe­cial tax dis­trict fund­ing because “I see what you do.”

Police Chief Travis Thompson then walked com­mis­sion­ers through a new stan­dard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure required by recent state leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing auto­mat­ic license plate read­ers. The depart­ment already uses the Flock Safety sys­tem and has trained every autho­rized user.

“Only prop­er­ly trained and autho­rized per­son­nel are allowed to access the auto­mat­ic license plate read­er sys­tem,” Thompson said. Every search leaves an auditable dig­i­tal foot­print. The tech­nol­o­gy may be used sole­ly for offi­cial law-enforce­ment pur­pos­es such as crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions or locat­ing miss­ing or endan­gered per­sons. Officers must inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy any alert before tak­ing action.

Bottom of Form

Thompson stressed pri­va­cy lim­its. The cam­eras, placed on pub­lic right-of-way with Transportation Cabinet approval, cap­ture only a vehi­cle and its license plate. “They don’t take a pic­ture of your face. They don’t have facial recog­ni­tion,” he said. The sys­tem can­not be used for per­son­al rea­sons, harass­ment, or to tar­get pro­tect­ed groups.

Every detec­tion and inquiry now requires an asso­ci­at­ed case or inci­dent num­ber and a doc­u­ment­ed reason—an inter­nal rule Thompson put in place ear­li­er this year. Audits of at least 10 ran­dom search­es will occur every 90 days.

Asked how the cam­eras have helped, Thompson replied, “They’re (a) tremen­dous help… miss­ing per­sons, endan­gered per­sons, want­ed per­sons, stolen vehi­cles, stolen plates, shoplifters… Many, many ways.” He also not­ed the first van­dal­ism of a cam­era two weeks ear­li­er; detec­tives are fol­low­ing leads.