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BOSTON (WHDH) - Not long after the shooter took the lives of two students at Brown University, law enforcement turned to a network of cameras to help track down the gunman.
“Our team has been working with law enforcement locally in providence but also across the state and federally as well to collaborate and share the best information we can,” Josh Thomas said, Chief Communications Officer at Flock Safety.
Flock is a company that makes surveillance cameras that can not only scan and track license plates, but can identify cars by color and type.
A person spotted a gray Nissan with Florida plates they believed could be the shooter’s car and posted the information on Reddit. That description was all Flock needed to break the case wide open.
“We have unique vehicle fingerprint technology,” Thomas said. “It takes into account all of the characteristics of the car. The color the make the type aftermarket modification and you are right, the license plate but also the state of the license plate and if that exact same car had the license plate switched.”
Providence police took the information from the tip and ran it through their flock database.
“He drove to the vicinity of Brown University where his car was observed intermittently between December 1st and 12th,” Leah Foley said, U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts.
Police found that in 14 instances of that car passing Flock cameras.
That information is what helped police identify Claudio Manuel Neves Valente as their suspect.
“It’s times like this moments like this that having the ability to work across state lines is incredibly important,” Thomas said.
7Investigates sat down with Flock to learn how the cameras work. In a demonstration, we asked Flock to find all the red trucks that passed by one of their cameras over a two day span. A thousand vehicles passed by the camera. Flock narrowed it down and found the two red trucks that passed by it in a matter of seconds.
“If these cameras didn’t exist, this person might not have been found. What you needed was an eye witness to come forward with a description of a car. That was imperative.”
Flock said their cameras are 100% controlled by the local authorities who use them.
They say they don’t share any of the cameras’ data because they don’t even have access to it. Only the local departments do. In this case in Providence, Brookline teamed up to share their networks to track down a killer.
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