Moving to combat a spike in property crimes, the four cities on the Palos Verdes Peninsula are working with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to purchase and install a system of 44 license plate-reading cameras throughout the region.

Palos Verdes Estates Police Chief Jeff Kepley, giving an update on the project Tuesday, told the City Council that the exact locations of the cameras haven’t been determined yet. But he said all the cities are on board with the plan to help stabilize or reduce crime.

The automated license plate-recognition cameras would read the plate numbers of vehicles entering and exiting the Peninsula and scan them against police databases, searching for stolen vehicles or any vehicle owners with a warrant. Police also would use the videos to spot suspected vehicles fleeing crime scenes.

“We are looking at this as a true regional program,” Kepley said.

Sheriff’s Department statistics show the numbers of burglaries went up in three of the four Palos Verdes Peninsula cities from 2014 to 2015:

• Palos Verdes Estates recorded 82 burglaries in 2015, a 58 percent increase from the 52 in 2014.

• Rancho Palos Verdes recorded 208 in 2015, compared to 180 in 2014, a nearly 16 percent increase.

• Rolling Hills stayed even at nine each year.

• Rolling Hills Estates climbed from 26 in 2014 to 48 in 2015, an 85 percent increase.

Rancho Palos Verdes officials last month approved the covert placement of GPS trackers by sheriff’s deputies on vehicles suspected in multiple crimes. And in December, the city moved ahead with a proposal to install six new cameras, including replacing the two cameras at Palos Verdes Drive South and 25th Street that were put up in September as a pilot program.

One camera in RPV scanned the license plates of nearly 250,000 vehicles over three months, identifying 84 people with warrants associated with scanned plate numbers, 14 lost or stolen license plates and 19 stolen vehicles, Kepley said.

But installing 44 cameras on the Peninsula also would mean that the police database would mostly collect information on everyday citizens going about their business, said Palos Verdes Estates Councilman James Vandever, who predicted that residents would want to know more about the privacy policy.

“How much data are we are collecting on our residents?” Vandever asked.

Kepley said video or still images are routinely stored for 30 days to two years, but those details haven’t been determined yet.

“We’ll respond to the issue of privacy,” Kepley said. “It’s a sensitive subject for some, but I will remind us that when we go into a bank or we drive our cars, you’re on video surveillance more than you realize now.”

The data recorded by the cameras would be shared between the Palos Verdes Estates Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department, which patrols the cities of Rolling Hills, Rolling Hills Estates and Rancho Palos Verdes. The Palos Verdes Estates staff report said that PVE police and sheriff’s officials, along with city staff from each of the Peninsula cities, began meeting in December to identify potential sites for fixed cameras in each city:

• Rancho Palos Verdes: Two cameras for Palos Verdes Drive South and 25th Street (to replace pilot cameras) and four cameras for Palos Verdes Drive West near Marguerite Drive.

• Rolling Hills Estates: Ten to 12 cameras for Crenshaw Boulevard and Palos Verdes Drive North, eight cameras for Hawthorne Boulevard and Palos Verdes Drive North, and eight to 10 cameras for Palos Verdes Drive North and Palos Verdes Drive East.

• Rolling Hills: Three cameras inbound at each of the city’s entrances.

• Palos Verdes Estates: Three cameras at Palos Verdes Drive West/Palos Verdes Boulevard entrance coming into the city from Torrance and two cameras at Via Valmonte, coming in from Hawthorne Boulevard.

The majority of the cameras would be placed in Rolling Hills Estates “due to its strategic location as the gateway to the Peninsula and highly trafficked intersections,” the staff report said.

Officials want the cameras to have the ability to be cloud-hosted, rather than uploading the data to the sheriff’s network, so data can be more easily shared between the law enforcement agencies. That requirement whittled down the vendor pool to one, as identified by the county: Vigilant Solutions of Livermore, California.

Kepley said the equipment would be purchased in bulk for a cost savings to the cities. At $15,000 each, the total cost of the 44 cameras and associated equipment would be about $660,000, according to the report.

Also, Kepley told the council that he plans to bring a separate proposal forward in the coming months to purchase body cameras for police officers and in-car cameras for patrol vehicles.

Staff writer Larry Altman contributed to this report.