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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| CO Police deploy computerized license plate readers |
| 2007-05-03 |
| Edited for brevity. As [Aurora, CO police Lt. Troy] Edwards handed one man a ticket during a traffic stop this week, the two cameras mounted to the roof of his patrol car scanned the license plates whizzing by. When Edwards returned to his driver's seat, the laptop in his passenger seat sounded a siren and flashed a red bar next to a photo of a green Kia up ahead. The lawman dutifully fastened his seat belt and floored it, 60 mph, until he caught up with the driver, who had a warrant out for his arrest. Two stops in 20 minutes. Edwards arrested the man, whose wife then arrived to drive the Kia away. "Why was he pulled over?" she said. "Because his license plate showed that he had a warrant," Edwards replied. "Wow, that's modern," she deadpanned, eyeing the cameras. Aurora Police bought two of the plate readers in March, for about $25,000 each. In the past six months, Denver Police and the Colorado State Patrol also have each equipped three cars with the devices. "We're confident they are going to pay big dividends in the future," Denver Police spokesman Sonny Jackson said. Growing out of a partnership between gun manufacturer Remington and Italian information technology company Elsag, the Mobile Plate Hunter uses optical character-recognition technology developed for Italian postal workers to sort letters and parcels. The readers tell officers whether a driver's license has been canceled or revoked, if the car or plates are stolen or if there are any warrants out for the driver's arrest. Without the cameras, officers must radio in a suspicious looking vehicle's tag or enter it manually into a laptop computer. The cameras, by contrast, read 1,500 to 2,000 plates per day automatically, without requiring any attention from officers in the patrol car. The cameras are so effective that Edwards had to ignore sirens alerting him to three drivers with canceled or revoked licenses because he was already busy writing someone else a ticket for the same violation. In one recent 48-hour period, Aurora's two scanner-equipped cruisers produced seven warrant arrests and 25 tickets for driving with revoked or canceled licenses, and spotted someone driving a stolen car. |
| Posted by:Dar |
| #2 The cameras are so effective that Edwards had to ignore sirens alerting him to three drivers with canceled or revoked licenses because he was already busy writing someone else a ticket for the same violation. ...and each had been flagged as an illegal whom the local government said not to bother anyway. Betcha. Heh. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-05-03 20:52 |
| #1 I'll file this under "Good news-Bad news" and "Shades of 1984" Since it's currently being used in a 'good' way, hooray. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2007-05-03 19:45 |