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The Phoenix Police Department has turned to the Automatic License Plate Reader to help locate and recover stolen vehicles. The state Department of Public Safety purchased five of the cameras from May to August.

The camera is mounted on top of patrol cars and can scan as many as 10,000 license plates in one shift. The license plate numbers are compared with a database of stolen vehicles. An alarm goes off when there is a match.

"It can help us try to locate the vehicles more efficiently," says police Lt. Giles Tipsword. "It can do more than we can do. There's no way I can go out there and have officers input all that data."

Phoenix had the fourth highest auto theft rate in the nation last year with 53,291 vehicles stolen and 34,981 recovered.

The new technology can also be programmed to track vehicles that traffic drugs or are linked to homicide, robbery, and sex offender suspects.

Mesa, Tempe, and Glendale are currently using the cameras on a limited basis.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center (NLECTC) from the Arizona Republic (11/08/06); P. 1; Villa, Judi.