Photo: CTV News

A Surrey widow is urging the city to use traffic cameras to help catch killers.

Darlene Bennett's husband, an innocent victim, was gunned down in his driveway in June in a case of mistaken identity.

There have been no arrests in the case, and now Bennett is calling for the city to use its 400 traffic cams to record licence plates in effort to solve crimes, CTV News reports.

"That's a tool they need to solve murders and violent crime quicker," she told CTV. "It's a basic tool in today's age of technology, and they can't access it."

Mayor Doug McCallum says the cameras aren't designed to register licence plates because of privacy laws.

"The traffic cameras are not designed to collect personal information," he said in a letter to the widow. Their resolution is set for traffic management and road safety while avoiding recognition of personal identifiable information, he added.

Bennett notes red light and toll cameras do capture licence plates, and questions why traffic cams can't do the same.

– with files from CTV Vancouver