ASU police will soon be able to drive through Lot 59 and know the criminal history behind every vehicle parked there.
ASU police will soon mount two $28,000 license plate scanners onto two police vehicles, one that will patrol the Tempe campus and one that will travel between the other campuses.
The scanners will automatically screen a vehicle's plate and instantly retrieve all of the information linked to it. Officers can instantly tell whether the car was stolen and how many parking tickets it has received, said Cmdr. Jim Hardina of ASU police.
This should deter people from parking stolen vehicles on ASU property, Hardina said.
Police officials are excited to have this technology. The scanners will save them time, and they hope to have them up and running by the end of April, Hardina said.
"Right now, think about how many hundreds - actually maybe thousands - of cars there are in [ASU's] lots. And if you had to manually talk on the radio and say the license plate number or type it into the computer, think about how long that would take," he said. "But with the cameras, you can just drive down the parking lot and it's reading every plate you go past."
The license plate readers look like two small black cameras sitting on top of the police car, and they are held down by magnets so they can be moved and maneuvered.
Another benefit of the license plate scanner is the global positioning system built into it, said Cmdr. Van Montoya of ASU police.
A vehicle with the scanner could be left unattended and still read license plates and provide feedback, he said.
"Once you photograph a license plate, a message is sent telling you exactly where that car is and at what time," he said.
This feature will help to track any stolen vehicles, Montoya said.
Tempe police also have license plate readers on their vehicles. Tempe installed cameras on two vehicles and the results have been great, said Sgt. Mike Horn of Tempe police.
"[The license plate reader] allows our officers to be focused on driving and looking for suspicious activity while the license plate reader is doing its job and looking for stolen vehicles," he said. "Auto theft in Arizona is high and this is just another huge resource we have to combat this problem."
Tempe police's license plate readers only search for stolen vehicles and have recovered 12 stolen vehicles in the two months that the readers have been fully operational, Horn said.
Reach the reporter at: samuel.good@asu.edu.
