OGDEN -- When Weber County Sheriff's Office patrol officers hear the tune "Bad Boys" blaring from their laptop equipped with license-plate scanning technology, they know it means one thing: there's a stolen car in the area.
The new $20,000 scanning system, which is equipped in one vehicle owned by the sheriff's office, uses four cameras installed on the outside of the vehicle and two computer systems to take a snapshot of every license plate that drives past the patrol vehicle. The scanner system alerts the officer if the license plate is connected to a missing person, stolen vehicle or plates, wanted persons or revoked or expired registration.
The system, which the department has owned for several months, gives officers more information more quickly than if they were to manually enter the plate numbers in computer.
"They would sit by a stoplight, and manually put in each plate, and then go through dispatch," said Detective Chad Allen about how officers would run plate numbers before the scanner technology. "There's no way you could manually enter it all."
The cameras snap a picture of every vehicle passing on both sides of the patrol car, sometimes scanning hundreds of plates an hour. Officers can either use the system when they are driving between calls, or Allen said they will sometimes sit near busy intersections and let the scanner go to work.
Allen said deputies have found two stolen vehicles using the scanner, one parked at a motel and the other at a UTA Park and Ride.
While the system has its benefits, it's still not perfect, Allen said.
"It's another tool," he said. "It's not a catch-all."
The scanner can only process plates from Utah, and officers must double-check the pictures of the plates because the reader can misread letters and numbers because of damages in the plate or another viewing issue.
But Allen said the officers have had success using the system. He said they generally issue three to five citations a shift with the assistance of the license-plate scanner, along with their normal routine of responding to calls.
"We access all the same information (as manually-entering in plate numbers,)" he said. "This is just a faster way of running it."
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