Twelve hours, give or take.
That’s about how long it took to track down Brackus Golden, whom Cherokee County named a suspect in the murder of his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend.
Cherokee County deputies responded to a an “unknown trouble” call at a home on King Arthur Drive on Sunday, June 5. There, a 25-year-old man was dead on the sidewalk outside a home. Eyewitnesses said Golden, 24, had shot the man and driven away.
The next morning, Golden’s car was spotted by a license plate reader in Marietta. The Flock LPRs send out automatic alerts when a car’s plate loaded into the system drives by one of its cameras.
“When they opened up that alert, it says that individual was wanted for murder,” says Marietta Police Officer Chuck McPhilamy. “Certainly, that got everyone’s attention.”
McPhilamy says the first officer to physically locate the car in a burger chain’s parking lot radioed other officers, who coordinated their cruiser locations to block any possible escape routes, and synchronized an arrest.
“They were able to kind of sweep in together as a team and block that car in,” says McPhilamy. “That allowed us not only to hold that murder suspect accountable, but it also prevented a chase.”
Golden followed commands and was taken into custody without incident. He remains hospitalized with what he told paramedics was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the abdomen. McPhilamy says it’s unclear whether Golden shot himself on purpose or by accident.
McPhilamy says it’s more than the City’s license plate readers which add extra eyes to Marietta’s roadways: neighborhoods and businesses are also buying the LPRs, and tying them into the system. Although privacy advocates are concerned about the technology, the LPRs don’t log the plates of any and every car; it only sends up a flag if it scans a plate number which has been loaded into its system--say, of a stolen car, or a vehicle connected to a wanted person. Every law enforcement agency nationwide which uses the Flock system can access the information.
McPhilamy says the network of about four dozen City and private plate readers helps create a real-time dragnet, and has changed the way Marietta Police officers patrol.
“The license plate reader technology that we’re using today is the equivalent of an undercover officer sitting at every one of those locations--not only looking at all of those pieces of information, but automatically alerting us any time there’s a problem,” says McPhilamy.