OPP lay one impaired charge

News Release
O.P.P.

RIDE stats from the first week of the annual RIDE Program in RR District
Dates between November 27 - December 4, 2009.

Officers checked 2365 vehicles total. There was one roadside check.
There was one person charged with an impaired driving criminal offence.
There have been 14 other charges for offences including liquor licence act and highway traffic act.
There have been 3 personal injurycollisions and 16 property damage collisions.

New Technology

The Ontario Provincial Police are now better able to detect crime and identify offenders on our roads and highways, thanks to a sophisticated licence plate recognition project launched at a news conference in Toronto today.
OPP cruisers equipped with the new Automatic Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR) system now have the ability to scan thousands of licence plates per day, and officers can more quickly and easily identify stolen and non-compliant vehicles that are in violation of Criminal Code and Highway Traffic Act (HTA) laws, and take appropriate action.
ALPR is state-of-the-art technology that involves the use of a stationary camera which is mounted on a police vehicle. The Automatic Licence Plate Recognition system has outstanding image capture capability and the camera has the ability to scan licence plates that enter the camera’s field of view whether the vehicle is moving, parked or even travelling at a high rate of speed.
Once the camera captures the plate’s image, it is checked against a police and Ministry of Transportation (MTO) database “hotlist” of licence plates that are in poor standing such as, for example, those associated with stolen vehicles, plates that are suspended, reported stolen or missing and those with expired validation tags.
The OPP’s ALPR project consists of three fully marked OPP vehicles equipped with the latest ALPR and Mobile Workstation technology. One will be deployed in the GTA, one in Eastern Ontario and the other in Northern Ontario.

Beware of thin ice

OPP is reminding the public to be cautious of the ice this time of the year. With the colder weather here kids are eager to play on the ice, as well as snow machines crossing over frozen lakes. Be absolutely sure of the ice conditions before venturing out.
Conditions recommended by the Ontario Snowmobile Safety Committee identify a minimum ice thickness of 4” (10 cm) before you walk on and 5” (12 cm) or more for snow machines.