Do the police have the computer technology to do this?

ironpony

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Basically I did some research and asked a couple of cops, but they were disagreeing as to whether not the police have this technology.

One cop said that a patrol car, has a computer system, where a camera, searches and scans license plates at random, when the car drives, looking for plates that are out of order in any way.

The other cop said that he's never heard of that and that the plates always have to be searched manually by the officer, and that the police would not bother with a random scanning computer for whenever they drive around all the time.

Is this true?
 

ironpony

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Okay thanks. In my story the villains want to create a series of kidnappings over a few months of time. Now they of course would not want to use their own cars that can be traced back to them. If they steal cars, it attracts attention, and then the police are out looking for the reported stolen cars. If they use their own cars but with phony plates, the cars can still be traced back to the owners with the VID numbers, unless they bar the cars off the street with false ID's, and by off the street I mean not have any sales records of it all, for the police to find.

So if they wanted to do a series of kidnappings over months of time, what would be the best solution to use vehicles that could not be traced back to them, while at the same time, trying to avoid out of order license plate scans by the police?
 

blacbird

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It's in use in the UK. I don't know about elsewhere.

It would be much easier to use in the UK, methinks, where all license plates are in the same format, and the letters/numbers are large and legible. In the U.S. every state issues its own plates, now everywhere with multiple design formats, and personalized ones are very common. They are also smaller, with smaller and narrower fonts than are in use in the UK. But that's not to say such technology might not be in use here. I've never heard of it. The usual scenario here is that the cop reads the plate and phones into headquarters to have a search done.

Also, I doubt any of it is done at random. The only time a cop will ask for a search is if something is suspected.

caw
 

ironpony

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Oh okay. I thought that the police in the U.S. would have every state design license plate in their system, as well as personalized ones on the record as well.

What if a cop spots a plate that is phony or a stolen car reported or something. Would the cop do a search and pull the person over? Or would the cop suspect that this vehicle is going to be used in a crime and he would call it in, so that the police would put surveillance on the car instead to see where the people inside are going, and what possible crime they were going to commit with it, since often that stolen cars, or cars with phony plates are used for felonious purposes.
 

Treehouseman

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We have this in Australia. It's why we no longer have to use registration stickers on our cars anymore! The licence validity comes up as soon as the plate is scanned.

I've been pulled over for a previous report of *theft*. (Silly me, I'd lost my car in a multi level car park, called the cops, and found it again)

Three months later I was pulled over because of it. I had to explain that I'd forgotten to call them back and say the car was found!

Most police are too busy to worry about tailing a random car, unless they were assigned to that particular case, or if it was parked in a spot where the responsible detectives could pick up the trail. Most of the time the person whose car is stolen wants it back right away.
 

jclarkdawe

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No approach here is simple and cheap. Every year it becomes harder and harder to be a bad guy. But one approach would be what are called "in transit plates." These include plates issued to car dealerships and repair shops. But basically you set up one guy with a business that qualifies for in transit plates and then use those. They won't flag on the computer system, but will be recorded. You've got a guy who is exposed to being found. In transit plates work well with stolen vehicles. Scrutiny for in transit plates is high, but can be dealt with.

Anything beyond in transit plates is beyond the abilities of your characters.

Jim Clark-Dawe
 

cmhbob

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It's heavily used here in the states, and I have seen some privately-owned vehicles with the scanners on them here in NE OK. OK has a wide variety of plates, and that's without considering the tribal plates. We've probably got over 100 variations, and I'm being conservative.

These guys claim 250 agencies: http://elsag.com/index.asp

ACLU info on readers: https://www.aclu.org/feature/you-are-being-tracked

The alert is pretty much instant, so the officer should be able to do the stop as soon as she finds a suitable place to do so (an alert and aware officer isn't going to stop a stolen care right next to a school, for example). Typically, an officer will call dispatch with the location and direction of travel and request immediate backup. This would be a felony stop, with multiple officers, vehicle driver and passengers brought out one at a time at gunpoint, etc. The license plate being reported stolen is probable cause for the stop and for the level of the stop.

Even without a reader system, an officer can radio in the tag, or do the check from her in-car computer terminal; both responses will be very quick, within 30 seconds or so. I can't think of any good reason not to stop a stolen car ASAP, other than somehow getting called off by a supervisor with special knowledge that might not have been passed to patrol officers.
 

ironpony

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Okay thanks.

Is their any reason an officer would want to see where the car goes and what the crooks are up to first, to put out surveillance on them, instead of pulling over and running them into the computers right away? Like basically if the cops pull them over and arrest them right there, then the crooks would not be able to go commit their crimes, and the cops will not be able to see what they are up to. Is their any reason why the cops would want to wait and see if they can catch them using the vehicles to commit a bigger crime, rather than pulling them over before they commit the big crime, and the cops will therefore, never know what they were up to, with the untraceable plates?

Also, if the villains use the transit plates idea, and a cop were to scan a transit plate, what comes up then? Does the computer say that the car belongs to a car dealership?
 

cmhbob

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I think there's too much liability in not stopping a stolen car right then. It's bad enough stopping one, because it's a known felon in the car by virtue of the theft. I'd say unless a supervisor calls your patrol officer off, they're not going to wait long. Once they have backup in place and a good place to stop, they'll do it.

Transit plates are fairly rare in the US, although we do have "temp tags," issued by a dealer until the permanent plates can be issued by the state. Sometimes called "30-day" plates or tags, in most states, they're entered into the state database as soon as they're issued. These are usually heavy posterboard or light cardboard. I know there are a few states that do transit tags, and I'm not sure if those are usually entered in a database. We've also got "dealer plates" here, which a dealer puts on the car you're test driving. In Ohio, they'd have a 4-5 digit number, then a 2-3 digit number in a smaller font. The big number was traceable to a particular dealer, and the smaller number was tracked by the dealer, as in #35 tag is on salesman John Smith's take-home car, for example. I think Oklahoma dealer tags are similar. Haven't seen many of them yet.

Miranda, we don't see many cloned plates here, at least in my experience. In states that use both front & back tags, what'll happen a lot is the bad guys will steal the front tag from your car and put it on the back of theirs. It's less likely for you to notice the missing front tag, and you won't get stopped as quickly by the cops for a missing front tag as you would for a missing back tag. The only catch for the bad guys is that all of the registration stickers get put on the back plates, so a cop who sees a license plate with no registration stickers on the back has cause to stop that car.
 

frimble3

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I can't see why a patrol officer would bother following a stolen car unless he's been specifically told to do so, that the car known to be stolen by people known to be planning something big. I imagine very few stolen cars are stolen for anything than one-shot transportation, by kids 'joy-riding' or crooks wanting a quick getaway vehicle.
An officer could follow stolen cars all day and never find anything more interesting than drunk teenagers or guys running off with a case of beer and a carton of smokes from a convenience store.
 

jclarkdawe

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An "in transit" plate means the vehicle is not permanently registered under that plate. The plate is registered to a business, under a scheme like cmhbob describes. What the police officer will see is the business name and no identification as to what the vehicle is. Depending upon the state's approach, the vehicle can be anything from a motorcycle to a car to truck to a trailer to a motor home. Often the plate is not in the normal positions for a plate. One thing the officer is checking is that the vehicle type matches the registration. That's why in transit plates have some significant scope for fraud.

To the best of my knowledge, the technology available in the US is scanning for clones and unreported stolen plates (the front plate used in the rear of a similar vehicle) is there. Basically you set a parameter of X distance and if the plate is identified in two places at once with enough distance between them, an alert is sounded. I'm not hearing much about cloned plates, but the front plate scam is a problem.

The only way a police officer would not stop a stolen car as soon as possible is if he receives instructions not to do so. Other than that, he's likely to be fired for failing to act.

Jim Clark-Dawe
 

Trebor1415

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Okay thanks. In my story the villains want to create a series of kidnappings over a few months of time. Now they of course would not want to use their own cars that can be traced back to them. If they steal cars, it attracts attention, and then the police are out looking for the reported stolen cars. If they use their own cars but with phony plates, the cars can still be traced back to the owners with the VID numbers, unless they bar the cars off the street with false ID's, and by off the street I mean not have any sales records of it all, for the police to find.

So if they wanted to do a series of kidnappings over months of time, what would be the best solution to use vehicles that could not be traced back to them, while at the same time, trying to avoid out of order license plate scans by the police?

I'm thinking there are a variety of ways they can accomplish what they need to do and actually they may want to use more than one approach.

In general, to cut down on the risk of a stolen plate or stolen car being randomly discovered they'd want to minimize the exposure. They could steal the car at the last minute so that it may not even be reported stolen by the time they use it. This would work especially well if they steal a car that is not expected to be used for some length one time. One possibility is to steal a car from the long term parking at the airport, for instance. This would work especially well if they have an inside guy who works at the lot and can ID what cars just arrived and thus are likely to not be missed for longer periods of time. Or they could stake it out to watch who comes in and leaves a car and just steal one that looks good right after it's dropped off. Heck, they could even plan on returning the car to the lot after they use it so no one knows it was involved, especially if they switch the plates and then switch them back.

And, for everyone I said about cars above, you can substitute "just license plates." For instance, they could buy a cheap Ford Ecoline van to use in the kidnapping, steal a plate from a Ecoline van in the long term parking lot (so if it gets run while they are using it, it will came back as belonging to the right kind of van), use the stolen plate on their van, and then return the plate before it's missed.

Other sources could be cars bought for cash from local person to person ads. Again, would probably want to switch the plates to keep the trail from going back to the original seller who could be questioned to provide a description of the buyer.

If they have an in at a car dealer they could use paper dealer plates.

These are just off the top of my head
 

ironpony

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Okay thanks for the ideas people. I was thinking about the villains using transit plates or plates from the airport. However, the airport has good security cameras, and if the villains use the car to commit one of their kidnappings, and the kidnapping happened to be caught on a security camera somewhere that was not too far away, like across a street or something, the cops would be able to look at the footage, and perhaps be able to read the license plate on the car. They would trace it back to the airport, and be able to look to see who stole the car. Even if the thieves wore masks and gloves, they could still leave some clue behind.

Same with a using plates from a car dealership or repair shop. If the plates are spotted on camera, from any footage of the kidnapping being recorded, the plates can be traced back to that dealership, or that repair shop, and the people who work there will then be suspects on the police's radar.

So it seems that stealing cars that way, is less likely to get flagged by a patrol's car computer, but if you do get flagged, then the car is more traceable to a certain location or business, which will then give more evidence for the cops to chew on.

Is it possible to have a plate that is not flag-able, but the patrol cars' computers, but at the same time, not traceable to specific location or business? Is cloning plates perhaps better then?
 

robjvargas

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There's a very easy workaround to the plate reading cameras.

Paper "dealer" plates. Depending on the state, those plates don't have numbers on them, and if the bad guys don't give cops a different reason to check (i.e follow ALL traffic laws), they are generally ignored.

Those cameras are in use in the USA as well. Ars Technica
 

jclarkdawe

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Ironpony -- You're not understanding how bad guys work and how the police exploit that to the police's advantage.

Bad guys work on the principle of random chance. For instance, if you break into houses, spend less than two minutes in the house, your chances of getting caught are lower than if you spend ten minutes in the house. This system works well even with house alarms because it's based upon a sound principle -- that there is no police officer within two minutes or less for response time. Of course, if there is a cop parked around the corner, you're screwed. You get caught by a random chance.

The police know this, and put in two systematic checks to stop this. The first is random patrols. There is absolutely no way to predict where police cruisers will be. The second is requiring pawn shops to do various things to help identify hot property.

As a result of systematic checks and a couple of other factors, the crime rate has gone from 747.1 crimes per 100,000 people in 1993 to 386.9 crimes per 100,000 people in 2012. By amassing massive amounts of data, extensive use of computers, and hard work, the police are in the position to jump on someone when random chance works in their favor.

Motor vehicle theft has shown a decline, in part because of these cameras. There's no way to duck this massive database of information. What you, as a writer, has to do is figure out ways to out-smart this system. You've been given two viable ways to reduce the chances of getting caught by random chance. The long-term parking has a couple of issues that aren't commonly known, so it will work for your story.

I'm aware of a couple of other ways to jigger this system. They're beyond the abilities of your characters. And neither is 100% sure-fire. They merely reduce the chances of random chance to a minimum. As far as I know there's no 100% way to avoid this database.

But let me point out that as a writer, you have an advantage. You can control random chance. Book getting a bit boring, introduce random chance. Need to get your character out of trouble, introduce random chance. But an author takes the systems that the police use, and find the weak points in them to exploit. But if the author comes up with a fool-proof scheme (never mind that in reality I don't think that exists), then there is no drama in the book. It's the bad guys exploiting the weaknesses in the system that make a book work.

Jim Clark-Dawe
 

ironpony

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Okay thanks. There is one scene in my story, where one of the kidnappings is spotted, so the police will probably get a plate, but I do not want that plate being traced to a specific location of business, because then the police will have too much too chew on, too fast for the story.

You say that there are other ways they can do it, but it's beyond the abilities of my characters. Why is that?

Also, if a paper plate has no numbers on it, wouldn't the police find that suspicious, if they saw the plate while on patrol?
 

Trebor1415

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Okay thanks. There is one scene in my story, where one of the kidnappings is spotted, so the police will probably get a plate, but I do not want that plate being traced to a specific location of business, because then the police will have too much too chew on, too fast for the story.

You say that there are other ways they can do it, but it's beyond the abilities of my characters. Why is that?

Also, if a paper plate has no numbers on it, wouldn't the police find that suspicious, if they saw the plate while on patrol?

If you are referring to the "paper dealer plates" they are common. They are used when you buy a car before you get your plates. Nothing suspicious about that, at least not enough to look out of the ordinary to a random cop. And they are literally a piece of paper taped to the inside of the rear window, not a metal plate.

You are really over-thinking this and making it more difficult for yourself then it needs to be.

If you give the reader any plausible reason to suspend disbelief as to how they keep the cars getting tracked back to them the reader will buy it as long as the story is good. So, if you say they steal plates from an airport long term parking lot, and put those plates on an identical model car (so they come up "correct to that type of car" when the plate is run, the reader will buy it, even if there are cameras in the lot, etc.

Really. You don't have to solve this problem to 100% real world accuracy. You just have to create something that seems plausible and has the most obvious issues solved to give the readers the opportunity to suspend their disbelief.

Don't spend more time on this type of small detail than you need to either so it doesn't bog down the story. What I mean is, if you need the cops to get a clue from the plate, then introduce the security camera at the airport lot. But, if you don't want the cops to track them that way, just have the cops not track the plates back to the airport lot.

And really, these plate readers you are so concerned about aren't in action at every location 100% of the time. This is the type of thing you can bring into the story if you want to create a problem for the characters and give the cops a lead but that you don't HAVE to bring into the story at all if you don't want to. Just throw in a reference to them using recently stolen cars, or recently stolen plates, and the reader will buy it, and move on.

Really. Stop obsessing on this and just write.
 

ironpony

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Okay thanks. The plates are not a huge part of the plot for sure. It's just a hole I have to fill as to why the police do not catch them. There is one scene where one of the kidnappings is spotted by a patrol car, but I want the kidnappers to escape and get away.

Now if the plates are traceable, perhaps that will take the plot in another direction and that's good. But if they are not traceable, then the police will have to find another lead to chew on, which is cool too. Whatever works.

Perhaps I can use the plates, as a clue for the police, just so long as it's not TOO BIG of a clue, that will get the case solved too fast. Let's say the use the paper plates from the airport or something like that. Let's say the police find this out, that a license plate being caught on camera during one of the kidnappings was from a car parked at the airport.

Would the police be able to reprogram their cars' computers so that they can randomly search and scan for cars that are suppose to be parked at the airport specifically, and then look for those, in an effort to find the next car that will be used in the next crime hopefully?
 

cornflake

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How would the cops know what cars are "supposed to be" parked at the airport?
 

ironpony

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I suppose the airport would scan all the cars that go into the parking lot as they go in and work with the police or something like that. I don't need to use that as the police's next clue, it was just an idea. I just don't also want to have the plates be too big of a clue either.

You say that paper plates are just a piece of paper in the window. Can the car dealership logo on the paper plate be a forgery, so the villains are not actually working at the dealership, and it can be traced back to them?
 

jclarkdawe

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The reason I say that your characters don't have the ability to do advance stuff is because of the technical and computer expertise needed. Your characters are faking a rape to lull someone in with the window not blocked by a curtain. Your characters are about at the average level of ability for criminals.

Broadly speaking, the cop will be notified if the system says the vehicle is stolen, or the owner is subject to a BOLO or warrant. Everything else is stored in the system. It can be programmed with specific plates that are subject of an investigation.

Where the police would use this information is when one of your characters is being questioned by the police. Suspect says he's never been on I-40. Cops check his plates against the database, seeing whether he was ever on I-40. If they find that the suspect's car was on I-40, he's asked about the incident, before being confronted with a printout showing his vehicle on I-40. The whole idea of questioning is identifying when someone is lying, and then pouncing on the lie.

Criminals construct stories to establish their innocence. This usually involves them being places where the crime did not occur. The way to shake this story is to be able to show the suspect where he lied. This is one of the methods of showing those lies. Until police have reason to suspect the vehicle and/or suspect of being involved in this crime, the fact that their plates are being recorded is meaningless.

I haven't even heard of professional car thieves being too worried about this system. Chances are you can get a car jacked and hidden before it even shows up into the system. One of the big problems with this sort of stuff is the lag factor.

Jim Clark-Dawe
 

cornflake

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There's no logo. They're license plates. Issued by the state.