The federal government wants to expand a program that allows police to check license plates for stolen vehicles to also search for the vehicles tied to known or suspected terrorists, Prince William County police said Tuesday.
The Department of Homeland Security has asked for a grant proposal that would allow automated license plate readers to be bought throughout Northern Virginia for the purpose of pursuing “terrorist-type crimes,” county Detective Roland Mulligan said.
County police have recovered 10 stolen vehicles, located seven stolen license plates and arrested four people in the six months that they have been using their two license plate readers.
The plate reader also was used to apprehend one of the county’s top 10 parking violators — who had accumulated fines of more than $1,000 — in about 20 minutes, Mulligan said.
The license plate reader uses infrared cameras to automatically check plates against a “hot list” that contains the license plates of every stolen vehicle in the U.S. and Canada, Mulligan said.
“The camera takes a picture and checks the plate against the hot list in a matter of milliseconds,” he said.
The Homeland Security grant money would be used by Northern Virginia police departments to buy more readers.
Mulligan added that because all plates that register in the license plate reader must be checked, there was little risk of pulling over a car that was not stolen, or “no more so than in any other situation. You have to call it in. The data could be 24 hours old.
“If you follow the procedures you’re supposed to follow, there shouldn’t be a problem,” he said.
He said, though, that the system does have drawbacks, including the device’s registering of “false positives” when it does not recognize a vehicle’s state of origin and its inability to read plates with mixed fonts.
Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart, R-at large, asked whether standards were being issued nationally to make sure that all plates would be readable.
Mulligan said antique license plates are not readable by the device, nor are non-photo-reflective plates.
