The Home Office has announced that a vehicle number plate scanning system which has boosted police arrest rates is to receive £15 million funding. Trials have shown that an officer using ANPR makes 10 times the arrests of an officer without it.
The 15 million cash boost will help expand the scheme to other police forces. It will also fund the creation of a national data centre to exchange ANPR-read data from across the UK for post-incident investigation and to support work to tackle terrorism and organised crime.
ANPR consists of cameras linked to a computer. As a vehicle passes, the ANPR equipment reads the number plate and matches them against information stored against police databases to identify stolen vehicles or those involved in crime. Once identified by the system, suspicious vehicles are intercepted by the police and their drivers questioned. Once alerted, police officers stop the vehicle concerned. Only vehicles that are highlighted by enforcement agency databases will be stopped, so no law-abiding citizen has anything to fear from ANPR operations.
ANPR has many other uses, including tracking and stopping vehicles associated with known suspects. Schemes using ANPR to combat bilking from garage forecourts are also under way. ANPR systems can check up to 3,000 number plates per hour on vehicles travelling up to 100 mph. Number plates are then checked against a variety of databases including the Police National Computer, DVLA databases and local intelligence databases.
Mr Blunkett said:
”ANPR is a powerful tool, unique in its ability to impact on crime at every level, from local volume crime through cross-border and organised crime and counter terrorism. It brings enormous benefits to the police and to society.”
”More than 13,000 arrests have been made and 8 million of stolen goods and drugs seized as a result of targeted policing using hi-tech ANPR systems which use cameras to check vehicle number plates against databases and identify vehicles of interest to the police. Its impact goes far beyond the roads - thousands of arrests were made for theft, burglary and drugs offences.”
”ANPR is a shining example of how targeted police operations deliver positive results.”
Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom, ACPO lead on roads policing, said:
"I am absolutely delighted that the Government has decided to invest such a significant sum of money in the development of ANPR. We in the police can be relied upon to use it for the purpose for which it is intended - to deny criminals the use of the roads."
Since June 2003, forces have been able to recycle revenue from fixed penalties detected by ANPR technology to part-finance the expansion of the system, meaning that those who breach the law pay for its policing. In the first nine months of operation, 1 million was raised which helped improve the intelligence capability of ANPR teams, and contributed to administrative support.
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