Sheriff’s deputies get license plate reader

High-tech tool to help catch the bad guys

By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY — The manufacturer calls it “grand theft auto meets Robocop.”

It is technology that allows police officers to read multiple license plates on the fly, and pick up car thieves, fugitives and all manner of other wrongdoers. And now the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office has one of its own.

Sheriff Michael Schiff told lawmakers on December 21 that his deputies are now patrolling the county roads with a state-of-the-art license plate recognition system. The Remington Mobile Plate Hunter 800 uses two infrared cameras mounted on the deputy’s patrol car and a high-speed computer processor to scan up to 400 license plates per minute. The computer then compares the pictures of the plates against a database of wanted vehicles and wanted persons.

When the license plate reader gets a “hit,” the deputy is notified via a laptop computer mounted inside the patrol car. “Vehicles can be wanted for any number of reasons,” Schiff said. “Aside from being stolen, or having a suspended registration, a vehicle could be wanted in connection with an Amber Alert or some other serious crime, such as a bank robbery.”

To secure the $20,000 needed to purchase the device, Schiff approached some of his fellow sheriffs, who reached out to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services and secured a grant. In late November, Schiff was notified that Sullivan County was selected to receive a license plate reader.

“We are very excited,” said Lieutenant Paul Pratti, who is in charge of the plate reader program for the sheriff’s office. “This is an unbelievable piece of equipment that we would never have expected to get.” The deputies have already put it to good use, using it to help make over 20 arrests in the first week.

The technology was developed by Elsag, an Italian company, for the Italian Post Office as a quick way to read postal addresses. Elsag teamed up with the American gun manufacturer to produce the Remington Mobile Plate Hunters.

A prototype was tested by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department in 2005, and emerged with such impressive results that state police departments around the country, including those in New York and Pennsylvania, began to purchase the same or similar systems.

Over in Wayne County, PA, District Attorney Michael Lehutsky joined forces with Northeast Pennsylvania Insurance Fraud and Automobile Task Force to obtain access to the systems for use in Wayne County.