Most important police database « unstable » and « overburdened »: nevertheless « crucial in the fight against organized crime » (Antwerp)

Brandfish Interior Minister Bernard Quintin (MR) has a headache file: the dragging problems with the many ANPR cameras in our country that monitor car traffic, including border crossings.

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After the terrorist attacks in Brussels and Maalbeek in 2016, it was decided that 10,000 cameras had to be able to read that number plates. All connected with one large central database with the federal police. A matter that every police officer had access to the data from all ANPR cameras, for example to make searches for a used car in the context of a file.

But the database is faltering. Ever harder. Green MP Matti Vandemaele came from the Interior Minister Bernard Quintin (MR) to know that no additional cameras have been able to be connected since May 2023. « The platform has gradually become unstable and overloaded, » the minister admitted in the Chamber.

Four years

Specifically: police officers who want to consult the National ANPR database are regularly confronted with hours of pannes. Sometimes data from the cameras no longer flow through to the database, so that may be lost valuable police information. « A crucial element in the fight against organized crime is not working properly, » says Vandemaele. « That is completely unacceptable. »

« A crucial element in the fight against organized crime does not work properly. That is completely unacceptable »

Matti Vandemaele

Member of Parliament Green

The chiefs of the local police zones are also tired of the problems and urgently demand a solution. « ANPR cameras have not been connected to the central database for four years, » says Nicholas Paelinck, chairman of the Permanent Committee of the Local Police (VCLP), who represents the chiefs of local police zones.

Paelinck is talking about a « dragging impasse with possibly large safety risks ». What, for example, if the database is flat, and there must be urgent searches in the context of a terrorism file, it sounds. According to Paelinck, it also costs the government, because the database problems have not been able to be hired for a long time. Those checks also take place via ANPR cameras.

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In addition, Groen thinks it is problematic that different local forces themselves set up databases themselves, a matter that the cameras are not unemployed by the side of the road. Minister Quintin confirms that practice. Vandemaele: « But because of the proliferation of local databases, there is no longer a central overview. »

According to Groen, the Antwerp Police Zone-the largest corps in the country-would also commercialize its Database Infrastructure for ANPR cameras. « They sell their system to other local zones, for a large sum of money. » What, according to Vandemaele, is « benefiting from the shortcomings of the national system ».

The Antwerp police confirm that it developed its own ANPR data system and thereby refers to the problems with the federal system. « Other police zones can use the software. But that offer is in no way profitable. It is merely costing, where other zones pay the actual costs. »