WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-High-Tech Tool Spies Scofflaws

High-Tech Tool Spies Scofflaws

St. Albans, Vermont - November 26, 2009

These days, Officer Paul Talley patrols the streets of St. Albans in a cruiser equipped with a pair of high-tech infrared cameras that are the eyes for a new police tool.

"There's the CPU for itself. All of that," he said. "That is the brains."

The tool is called a license plate reader or LPR for short.

"And every car I drive by or drives by me, I'll get their license plates," he explained.

The cameras can photograph and store the images of up to 3,000 license plates per minute of every vehicle the cruiser passes-- moving or parked-- on both sides of the road.

The plates and photos of the vehicles are instantly displayed, one-by-one, on a monitor next to the officer, but only after the plates have been compared at the speed of light with a data bank of plates on vehicles registered to scofflaw motorists and fugitives.

"Anybody who is suspended civilly or criminally, any vehicle that's not registered, anybody whose license is expired, and warrants out of Franklin County, any vehicles that are stolen," Talley listed. "It could be for a $25 parking ticket that you failed to pay a couple of years ago."

Legal plates are framed in green; the plates on the scofflaw vehicles are framed in red and trigger an alert. But Talley does not try to pull over every potential target vehicle. It would be impossible.

For six months the St. Albans police have been the first and only police agency in Vermont using a license plate reader. In those six months their only LPR has identified more than 59,000 license plates on vehicles registered to scofflaw motorists or fugitives. That's an average of 350 alerts per day.

So Talley and his colleagues will not pull over an alert vehicle until they are certain that a suspended driver or fugitive is behind the wheel, or the driver of an alert vehicle gives the police probable cause to pull them over.

"He's got no lights on," Talley said of one target vehicle.

In this case the LPR alerted that the car was registered to a suspended drunk driver, and when the driver turned off his headlights it gave Talley probable cause to pull him over. It turns out the suspended driver was at the wheel. He was arrested and taken to the station where police say they learned he was once again driving drunk.

"This plate reader's only doing what we can do with our naked eye. We just can't do it as quickly," St. Albans Police Chief Gary Taylor said.

Chief Taylor says the $15,000 LPR was purchased with a federal grant and was worth every penny because it dramatically increases police efficiency and public safety.

"I think that's a win-win situation for our taxpayers or the police departments in our communities," Taylor said.

During our 90 minute ride along with Officer Paul Talley, his LPR photographed and stored the images of nearly 1,300 license plates. Of those, 54 were on vehicles owned by suspended drivers. That's 54 potential scofflaws running the risk of being caught sometime soon thanks to the LPR.

Brian Joyce - WCAX News