Cameras scan license plates for stolen cars

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () bsf-llc com>]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.reader03apr03,0,73671.story
?coll=bal-home-headlines

Cameras scan license plates for stolen cars

By Melissa Harris
Sun reporter
Originally published April 3, 2006
As her marked car crawled through the parking lot, Detective Kelly Tibbs'
new laptop beeped like a supermarket scanner. Two cameras, positioned like
crab eyes on the cruiser's roof, snapped digital pictures of hundreds of
license plates, and with each beep, the laptop checked the images against an
FBI list of stolen cars.

Such cameras - called Mobile Plate Hunters - are replacing the laborious
eyeball-and-keystroke method of checking for stolen cars, letting busy
officers rely instead on an automated scan that takes less than a second.

Already in widespread use in London and Italy, automatic number plate
recognition is a technology on the verge of exploding in the
Baltimore-Washington area, fueled in places by funds from the federal
Department of Homeland Security.

Howard and Anne Arundel counties deploy one each. Prince George's County and
the District of Columbia have ordered more than a dozen of the cameras,
which have been in use in Prince George's since August and the district
since January.

Baltimore police are soliciting bids for a system that would work with the
city's existing network of street surveillance cameras. And as early as this
summer's vacation rush, Maryland Transportation Authority Police hope to add
the cameras to the Bay Bridge as part of a pilot project with the U.S.
Department of Justice.

Stationary cameras, such as those envisioned for Baltimore and the Bay
Bridge, could alert nearby officers if an offending vehicle - one bearing a
license plate registered to a wanted criminal, suspected terrorist or car
thief - goes past.

"The uses are as limitless as your imagination," said Lt. John McKissick,
director of Howard County's emergency preparedness division. "We're just in
the infancy of this project, but already it saves us money and manpower."

...

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