New High Tech Crime Detection Gear in Berkeley Township

If the car you're driving is over the speed limit, uninsured, or even stolen, Berkeley Township police will know about it in seconds.

Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) system is now in use in one of the their squad cars. Mayor Carmen Amato and Police Chief Karin DiMichele introduced the innovation this week to attendees of the Borough Council meeting.

ALPR converts infrared images of thousands of plates per minute into text files through Optical Character Recognition technology, police said.

The data is compared to stored information in numerous law enforcement sources, all the way up to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC).

ALPR is also employed in crime scene investigations, tracks criminal travel patterns and enhances intelligence gathering, police said.

Township officials used a Homeland Security grant to buy the gear.