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New Technology Helps Cape Girardeau PD Scan License Plates

Cape Girardeau Police Department

The Cape Girardeau Police Department now has a license plate reader camera attached to one of its patrol cars. The camera allows police to scan a large number of license plates in a short period of time.

During a recent training session, Cape Girardeau police were able to scan 800 license plates within 30 minutes, according to police spokesperson Darin Hickey.

“We are looking for stolen vehicles, stolen license plates, felony warrants, Amber Alerts, registered sex offenders,” Hickey said.

He says the reader scans each license plate through the National Crime Information Computer (NCIC). But all that information doesn’t bounce back to the police. Instead, police only receive information that’s valuable to them.

“It’s not giving us every registered owner. It is just checking for wanted and stolen,” Hickey said. “We got the license reader camera out the other day when Poplar Bluff had their incident with the child abduction because that information was in NCIC for that suspect vehicle. So we had our license plate reader camera out running just in case the suspect did come to Cape Girardeau.”

The Cape Girardeau PD received the $18,000 to $20,000 system from the Missouri Police Chiefs Association.

Hickey says this is technology that many police departments have been using for 10 years.

The license plate reader is the latest new technology adopted by the Cape Girardeau PD. Earlier this year, the department installed laptop computers in patrol cars.