VENTURA COUNTY — As consumer engagement with technology becomes increasingly widespread, it would be a naïve criminal who failed to consider the possibility that local area cops are productively implementing some rather remarkable tech advances in the interests of public safety and law enforcement.
One of those tech tools riding in every one of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department’s black-and-white patrol cars is the Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR), which enables deputies—who may otherwise be attending to the task of navigating SoCal’s remarkably challenging traffic—to be instantly alerted to any parked, passing, or oncoming vehicle reported as stolen.
That’s exactly what happened in the pre-dawn hours of August 7th, when, at approximately 4:20 a.m. on a Thousand Oaks boulevard, a patrol deputy drove past a parked car that set off some bells and whistles.
According to Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Detective Jason Karol, the deputy then “located the car and notified Thousand Oaks detectives” who were soon on the scene setting up some stealthy surveillance, clearly interested in seeing who might have the temerity to get behind the wheel of the stolen vehicle.
They didn’t have to wait long, for at 7:00 a.m. that same morning, 49-year-old Angelie Gamboa opened the car door and blithely drove away.
But she didn’t get far as “patrol deputies conducted an enforcement stop” and she was soon in handcuffs and under arrest. Noting that Gamboa already had an outstanding warrant for her arrest on charges of identity theft in neighboring Los Angeles County, deputies then transported her to Ventura County Jail where she was booked on charges of automobile theft and identity theft.
Photo: Courtesy Ventura County Jail Booking
