State police on the Pennsylvania Turnpike are experimenting with a high-tech device that reads license plates and provides instant crime information, says the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. On Monday afternoon, when Trooper Donald Hardeman pulled over a Honda Accord racing down the toll road at 91 mph, an infrared TV camera detected the vehicle as stolen and posted the information on a screen on the console. He called backup to help arrest the three occupants, who were arrested and also charged with a series of burglaries near Harrisburg.
The Motorola Automatic License Plate Reader “gave us a tactical advantage,” said Lt. Adam Kisthardt of the Pennsylvania State Police. Motorola chose Pennsylvania to experiment with the new technology. “The cameras can read in snow, rain, in bright sunshine or total darkness,” Kisthardt said. “They read the reflective lettering and numbers on plates and, in a split second, compare the image to information in the CLEAN network,” the statewide database where law enforcement agencies post stolen vehicles, fugitives, all points bulletins and Amber alerts.