PORT ST. LUCIE, FL -- O
fficer Albert Sohl's patrol car looks like any other from the front. But go around back and there are a few new add-ons. The accessories are cameras and their job is to capture the license plates of any vehicle within a 25-foot radius.
Inside the squad car, Officer Sohl points to a green bar on his computer screen. "That green bar you see, that means the tags are clean."The Port St. Lucie Police Department is trying out the "Mobile Plate Hunter 900" to find stolen vehicles, people with warrants with suspended licenses, or those who switch stickers off their tags.
The cameras can scan a thousand tags a minute and the company claims an officer can be speeding along at 100 miles an hour and still read a tag. The tag is compared to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement database that's updated every day. So officer Sohl would know if someone had a suspended license and was out on the road the next day.
There are three cameras on the patrol car. Two are for the cars that the officer passes while the third captures the plates of cars heading in the opposite direction.
But what about drivers who try to cover up their plates? It's nothing that infrared technology can't cure.
"Tag covers, dirty covers, it doesn't matter," said Officer Sohl. "The cameras can break through and read it and we'll get the information."
This new technology comes with a price. Each unit costs anywhere from 16-to-20 thousand dollars. So it remains to be seen if these extra eyes will be focused on area shopping centers for long.
