License plate cameras to aid police investigations will be added to several Philadelphia bridges

PHILADELPHIA - License plate cameras designed to help law enforcement with criminal investigations will soon be added to bridges connecting Philadelphia and New Jersey.

The Delaware River Port Authority voted last month to allow New Jersey State Police to install cameras on the Ben Franklin, Walt Whitman, and Commodore Barry bridges. 

They say the cameras are necessary to help law enforcement with criminal and homeland security investigations. Rob Finnegan, Chief Safety Officer for the Delaware River Port Authority, explained that the cameras can also help track down missing people. 

"If someone is missing – a child was taken in an Amber Alert or a missing elderly – then that information can be put in the database and an alarm will be triggered when that vehicle or vehicles in that incident passes a reader," Finnegan said. 

He added that the license plate cameras are not intended to infringe on the privacy of law abiding citizens, explaining that the New Jersey State Police controlled database "is not the ‘Big Brother’ thing that a lot of people are concerned about."

"There's certainly not enough resources to track all the data that [the cameras] will collect," Finnegan said. "The database is there to go back and look for defined time periods, defined vehicles that fit certain parameters for crimes – things of that nature."

The port authority expects to have the camera network operational by the summer.