Minnehaha County to add new cameras to catch stolen vehicles

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) - With Sioux Falls being the largest city in South Dakota, there tends to be a higher amount of crime, especially when it comes to stolen vehicles.

However, those criminals aren’t just staying in Sioux Falls, but traveling outside into rural Minnehaha County.

To help track the criminals and vehicles, the Sheriff’s Office will be implementing cameras around the highways of the county.

In the next couple of months, the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Office will be implementing License Plate Reader cameras.

They are owned by Flock Safety, and they are connected to a database with many other LPR cameras around the state.

The Sheriff’s Office tells me they are not speed traps or live cameras; they are only meant to catch criminals and stolen vehicles.

If you’ve been driving around Sioux Falls, you may have noticed these cameras connected to poles.

These are License Plate Reader cameras.

They help capture the license plates of stolen vehicles, and Captain Joe Bosman is excited to start implementing them around Minnehaha County.

“Criminals aren’t tied down to one place; they move around, so sometimes the people we seek in Sioux Falls or surrounding communities are all in the same, one in all, and so we like to have that connection with our technology,” said Bosman.

These cameras are connected to a national database for stolen vehicles, and when a stolen vehicle drives through these cameras, it takes a snapshot of the license plate, sends that photo back to the database, and alerts authorities in the area.

Madison was the first city in South Dakota to use the LPR cameras.

They were installed in 2022, and Chief Meyer said they’ve been a success.

“If we have a crime that is reported in a specific area, and we have a general description of that vehicle, we can typically go on and pull that information up and have it at our fingertips and start developing suspects in the matter of minutes versus days,” said Meyer.

These cameras also do more than just check for stolen vehicles.

“We use it for retail theft, we use it for hit and run accidents, we use them to solve cases of missing persons,” said Meyer.

These cameras are solar-powered, and Bosman says the Sheriff’s Office plans on putting eight cameras around Minnehaha County.

And with only so many deputies available, Bosman said this will make their jobs easier and help get justice sooner.

“What if a stolen vehicle was reported in Hughes County a week ago. Well, we aren’t going to know what that is, but if it is entered into the national database, which the system checks, that car comes driving through one of our cameras, it’s going to alert our deputies and say, ‘Hey, that car that just went by is a stolen vehicle. Please go check on it,’” said Bosman.

Captain Bosman said that these cameras are on a 2-year trial, and if they prove successful, the county could order more for the future.