Using PlateRanger ALPR and CrimeTracer to Strengthen Narcotics Investigations

Drug-related crime and overdose remain stubbornly high even as provisional CDC data show 107,543 overdose deaths in 2023, which is 3% decrease from 2022, and the first annual decline since 2018. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports that more than 90 percent of fentanyl seizures now occur at ports of entry, with cartels hiding the drug “primarily in vehicles driven by U.S. citizens”.

Not only are narcotics a significant problem in areas across the nation, but the International Association of Chiefs of Police notes from a 2019 study that motor vehicles are a factor in more than 75 percent of all crimes, making vehicle intelligence indispensable for investigators. Together, these figures underscore two realities: narcotics remain the deadliest public-safety threat in the United States, and most narcotics trafficking activity is literally on wheels.

The Investigative Challenge

Undercover buys, confidential informants, and surveillance teams can generate dozens of leads in days. Yet each lead is just one piece of a puzzle that often spans counties, states, and federal task-force jurisdictions. The problem is connecting those fragments quickly enough to act before supply lines shift or stash houses move.

But vehicle data can help solve narcotics cases. Traffickers rely on cars, pickups, vans, and rental trucks because they let couriers blend into regular traffic and cross multiple jurisdictions in a single shift. That mobility creates patterns investigators can exploit:

• Repeat stops at known drug houses or hotels
• Late-night visits to storage units or short-term rentals
• Quick turnarounds along interstate corridors that link source cities to rural markets

Every license plate read provides time, place, and direction—breadcrumbs that, when accumulated and searched, expose supply routes or reveal a delivery network’s hub.

ALPR 101 for Narcotics Investigations

IACP guidance describes ALPR as an automated system that “captures plate images, converts them to alphanumeric characters, compares them to hotlists, and alerts when a vehicle of interest is observed”. PlateRanger not only does these basics, but expands to vital intelligence for narcotics investigations in these notable ways:

• Ease of deployment: Any compliant camera can become a reader, including surveillance cameras using PlateRanger Agent, extracting plate, make, model, and color without costly hardware swaps.
• Smartphone capture: PlateRanger’s Rekor Blue app lets undercover teams scan plates during buys, instantly uploading reads to the PlateRanger dashboard for real-time analysis.

• Interdiction Analytics: PlateRanger gathers video clips along with plate reads, providing information on vehicles traveling together. Tracking convoys or vehicles that travel together frequently can provide vehicle leads for narcotic investigations. Using vehicle make, model, and color in queries of nearby LPR cameras can also unearth possible suspect vehicles that visit the same locations frequently.
• Retrospective search: Investigators can query local LPR data, use the Rekor Public Safety Network (RPSN), and even integrate PlateRanger with other systems, like CrimeTracer, to query the plate read across jurisdictions. Searching for license plate numbers, partial plates, or vehicle makes, models, and colors can help identify matching vehicles. Additionally, the vehicle information can be used to filter nearby plate reads by time, location, or vehicle attributes, allowing for confirmation whether a suspect car was near multiple drug crimes.
• Vehicle alerts: Both PlateRanger and CrimeTracer let users add alerts on vehicles. In addition to hot lists and BOLOs, an agency that enters a vehicle of interest in the alert list will be notified of new plate reads, uncovering multiple linking layers of people, locations, and organizations that may be connected.

Want to see PlateRanger and CrimeTracer in action? Register to watch the upcoming Webinar, from Tip to Takedown.

Additional Intelligence with CrimeTracer

CrimeTracer fuses ALPR hits with more than a billion incident records, such as RMS, CAD, jail bookings, BOLOs, and field interviews, all within a single search query. When investigators import PlateRanger reads, the platform instantly surfaces:

• Past narcotics Complaints tied to the vehicle or its frequent locations
• Known associates who rode in the same car during prior stops
• Cross-jurisdictional matches where the vehicle was involved in drug arrests or previous drug warrants
• Unknown previous criminal and non-criminal involvements, such as citations, traffic accidents, and gang involvement, that can bolster an investigation
• Uncovering associations between vehicles and people, linking those that may be three or more degrees away from the vehicle being queried

Wildcard plate searches even turn partial digits into usable leads, filling investigative gaps that traditional DMV queries miss. CrimeTracer’s Chatbot also allows easier queries that can unearth possible leads more quickly.

Searching PlateRanger’s ALPR results through CrimeTracer uncovers prior contacts with the police that involve the vehicle. Calls like arrests, traffic citations, traffic accidents, parking notices, and more. Using link analysis, CrimeTracer can also uncover addresses or links between the plate and known offenders, finding commonalities between vehicles, people, and other narcotics crimes.

Using the Best Tools to Close Narcotics Cases

The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) recommends multi-agency collaboration and data-driven problem-solving to avoid duplicated effort and to amplify limited resources in narcotics investigations. By uniting PlateRanger’s advanced ALPR capabilities with CrimeTracer’s deep, cross-jurisdictional data fusion, agencies can turn fragmented narcotics tips into actionable intelligence faster than ever before. These tools don’t just capture license plates—they connect vehicles, people, places, and prior incidents into a clear investigative picture.

In a field where traffickers adapt quickly and evidence can vanish overnight, the ability to quickly query vehicle information across multiple databases can be the difference between a missed opportunity and a significant drug seizure. For narcotics investigators facing high caseloads and complex networks, this integrated approach offers a force multiplier, shortening case timelines, expanding lead generation, and ultimately helping agencies disrupt the supply chains fueling drug-related crime.

Discover how PlateRanger and CrimeTracer can help strengthen your agency’s narcotics investigations