A police car cruises the streets and neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. Mounted cameras scan 200 license plates a minute on vehicles parked and driving nearby.
Though city police have had the technology for two years, they've kept its existence largely under cover. But in the coming year, police Chief Nate Harper hopes to expand the program to more police cars and include the scanning option on surveillance cameras the city plans to mount in several neighborhoods, including bridges to Downtown.
The license plate scanning technology has been adopted by a number of police agencies nationwide, though some decry the crime-fighting efforts they say are akin to "Big Brother" watching law-abiding citizens. Harper doesn't agree.
"You're on camera everywhere you go today," Harper said. "You go to get gas, walk into a convenience store, into a bank, walk Downtown, past an ATM, go to a Steelers game, you're on camera. We're not trying to pry into the lives of those who are obeying the law. We're looking for those who aren't."
Pittsburgh bought the license plate scanning technology with $25,000 from the Pennsylvania Auto Theft Prevention Authority, an organization established by the Legislature in 1994 and funded by auto insurance companies.
In two years of its use, police have recovered 180 stolen cars.
The technology saves time and manpower, Assistant Chief Paul Donaldson said.
"You have this car, driving the streets, and this equipment is scanning all the license plates on the right and left side of the car," Donaldson said. "If you had an officer who had to call in every single license plate he drove past, that would take up so much time. This is much more efficient."
The technology works like this: As a police cruiser passes by cars, mounted cameras scan license plates and compare the sequence of characters and numbers to a database. The database network can contain information on stolen vehicles, cars that might have been used in crimes, vehicles wanted in connection with child abductions and other incidents, Harper said. If there's a match, the software triggers an alarm and alerts the officer.
The program is being touted with helping to find a San Jose, Calif., man wanted for the Nov. 5 abduction and attempted sexual assault of a girl.
California police officials said it was a breakthrough moment for license-plate recognition. A San Jose police officer was on routine patrol that day, hours after the 12-year-old girl who was walking with her sister was rammed with a stolen car and pulled inside. Police said her attacker tried to assault her before she fought back and escaped barefoot.
As the officer passed by parked cars in a cruiser with the cameras, he heard an alert.
"Stolen car," a computer voice said. The officer pulled next to a white Toyota sedan, which investigators soon concluded was the one that struck the girl. They arrested the car's owner.
The system is used by Pennsylvania State Police, and license plate scanners are mounted at toll booths along the Pennsylvania Turnpike to watch for stolen and wanted vehicles and those who avoid paying tolls, officials said. The Pittsburgh Parking Authority uses a similar scanner to look for vehicles whose owners have outstanding parking violations, officials said.
Harper has visited other U.S. cities that combine the license-plate technology with surveillance cameras mounted throughout neighborhoods and hopes Pittsburgh can do the same. The technology allows police to enter specific query information into the database.
"If we have a bank robbery or other crime Downtown and we have these cameras with this technology mounted on bridges that connect to Downtown, we can enter the suspect vehicle information and the cameras will alert us if they scan a license plate that leads to the same car or make and model of a car that we're looking for," Harper said.
The American Civil Liberties Union argues against cities using surveillance cameras. Attorneys for the organization say many of the cameras do not show clear images, and the license plate scanning technology infringes on drivers' civil rights.
Pittsburgh has 70 surveillance and video cameras Downtown, and city officials want to install 28 more. They want to link the cameras to a centralized network and activate them to take photos when gunshots are fired.
The city is soliciting plans from more than a dozen firms to provide the surveillance system and has $3.4 million for startup costs.
