Automated license plate readers (ALPR) are cameras that read alpha-numeric characters on vehicles. Their deployment into law enforcement has many benefits including the ability to identify crimes that involve a motor vehicle with higher accuracy; 70% of crimes involve the use of a motor vehicle. This statistic is in part, why using ALPR systems are so effective in improving the efficiency of police officers considering that vehicles operated on public highways must be registered and bear license plates.
ALPR systems are able to scan license plates automatically and continuously without downtime or the need for officers to be plugged into the system, compared to when an officer needs to run the plate from their patrol car manually. Optical character recognition software is used to translate the scans of license plates into text and then compare the result against one or more hotlists loaded into the system. In comparison an officer in the field can check at maximum 150 license plates per hour, an ALPR system can scan 3,600 plates per hour while automatically checking the scans against the lists in the system to determine if a car should be pulled over and to also aid in the clarification of if arrests need to be made.
For more information on the research that has been conducted on APLR systems, you can visit this article on how law enforcement agencies can use research findings to gain support for the use of ALPR systems, full article here.
Rugged Tablet Integration
Rugged tablets for law enforcement can integrate with ALPR systems and are designed for durability to withstand the vibration of a vehicle, while also providing the mobility to move easily from the office, to the car, and to the field. Rugged tablets offer multiple uses to law enforcement from crash scene investigations to traffic safety to license plate scanning and more. Adding mobile, rugged tablets with LTE/GPS that switches to external antennas provides additional flexibility to how ALPR systems are deployed.
In an ALPR enabled mobile car for traffic/car theft enforcement, the tablet is used to view the information gathered by cameras against a hot list of stolen cars to assist an officer in determining if a stop should be made based on the license plate information.
When an ALPR system is used in a mobile trailer, the tablet can be accessed remotely and accessed on-demand to transmit either real-time information or information gathered over time.
ALPR systems have been found to be considerably more cost-effective than traditional policing methods, even after taking into account the cost of the investment in the system. When APLR systems are integrated with rugged tablets for law enforcement, the efficiency of the job of law enforcement officers increases greatly.