License Plate Scanner Aimed to Snag Offenders

Police in DC area now have a system that can scan up to 3,600 license plates within a minute. It’s a system that works faster than ever before. The scans can detect stolen plates and stolen cars in your community. It’s called a Mobile Plate Hunter 900 (MPH-900), and it’s helping officers track down offenders from all 50 states. “It will be entered in NCIC through our headquarters. That will be automatically downloaded every day to my laptop, and when that automatic license plate reader recognizes it, it will alert me within a millisecond, I’ll confirm it through headquarters, and then we have a stolen vehicle or a stolen license registration plate,” says Officer Chris Harris of the Clarksburg Police Department. One camera faces out on the back of a cruiser at a 90 degree angle, another sits in the center of rear, and the third can scan plates of off cars even while the officer is just passing by. “Parked vehicles on either side of me, vehicles that pass me on my right or my left. If I’m traveling down Route 50. any vehicles that are passing me, I pick those up as well,” says Harris. Officers say it’s not just Harrison County that has a high number of stolen license plates. This device will help them find offenders from surrounding counties and states. “This will help in surrounding counties also. If another state has a stolen vehicle coming through, they can call us. We can enter that tag in, and it will automatically pick it up if they come through this area,” says Harris. Not only will the device allow police to crack down on crime, it also takes some relief off of other officers on the road. “Normally, we have routine calls that we have to answer, so while I’m doing that it will still be reading plates just like officers that are strictly traffic running tags,” says Harris.

Source WDTV