Brother Brigham is watching.
At least that's how it might seem to anyone trying to park in the wrong zone on the BYU campus this year.
Starting this semester, the university is trading in the traditional parking stickers for some sophisticated cameras and computer software. The new technology will allow the university to compare license-plate numbers to its database to verify that students aren't parking in faculty slots and that non-students don't stray from visitor parking.
BYU parking enforcement officers will make a pass through the university's 60 parking lots each day in a car with cameras mounted on the roof, compiling an intimate portrait of each vehicle on campus, right down to its color and GPS coordinates.
"Everything is just coming online," said Lt. Greg Barber, BYU's top parking enforcement officer. "The technology was actually developed in Israel, has been used in Europe for a while and is making its way to the United States by way of Canada."
Parking at BYU is a major issue. The school has 18,000 parking spaces on campus, and during the school year there are usually about 13,000 cars parked in those lots. There are no parking fees at BYU, but different lots are designated for faculty and staff, graduate students and undergraduate students.
Here is how the new system works:
Students will be required to register their cars online, through their password-protected student accounts, at the start of each fall semester. Faculty members' vehicles and staff vehicles have already been put in the database and won't need to be renewed. New cars can be added as needed over the Internet.
"We were able to do away with those icky stickers that you put on your window," Barber said. "Those are completely gone. No more wasting hours standing in line waiting to get a permit."
During each day, two or three parking enforcement officers will drive through the rows of the parking lots with the cameras reading license plates on both sides of a new white Mitsubishi Outlander.
"With the money we saved in parking sticker costs, we were able to buy the car," Barber said.
The camera will send an image of each license plate to a computer in the car, which translates the image into letters and numbers. This can be done quite quickly, Barber said, since the software can read 60 plates a second and can read a license plate on a car going 120 mph.
The license-plate numbers are then compared to those in the university's database. Whenever the camera detects a license plate in the wrong parking lot, an alarm sounds and the computer screen border turns red, prompting an officer to verify that the plate was read correctly and the car is in the wrong spot.
If necessary, the computer will then print out a ticket, which can be placed on the car's windshield. In the case of a habitual offender, the car may be "booted."
While there are still some bugs with the new system, it has proved remarkably effective, said Campus Police Sgt. Steve Goodman. Cameras similar to those mounted on the Outlander and license-plate recognition software are already being used to identify a faculty member's car and raise the gate to an "A" parking lot.
Still, he said, officers will probably go easy on parking violators even after enforcement begins on Sept. 15.
"We are probably going to be a lot more lenient the first part of this year," Goodman said. "For that time we will be writing a lot more warnings."
Those using the lots also have to follow some rules. License plates must be kept clean enough to read at the time the car is parked, although allowances will be made on snowy days after a car is parked. And those with plates only on the rear of their car must park with the plate facing the driving lane or they will be ticketed.
The new system also will make it possible to identify cars with license plates that have been reported as stolen and will help police locate cars for people who can't remember where they parked, a common occurrence during Campus Education Week.
Just enter the license plate number into the computer, and the GPS coordinates for the car will pop up on the screen.
e-mail: mhaddock@desnews.com