Police in Alpharetta, GA are 5 months into a 6 month evaluation of new police technology. This came as quite a suprise to a man who was stopped for driving a stolen truck, and had no idea how he was found. The answer was the automatic license plate reader inside the police vehicle, which had scanned his license plate, and identified it as stolen.

The system works by videocameras scanning licence plates, and having a computer use optical character recognition software to translate the images into letters and numbers. From there, the plate number is compared with databases of flagged plates that can come from law enforcement agencies or the Georgia DDS.

The implications of this license plate scanning system are significant.  These licence plate scanning systems can identify far more than stolen vehicles. They can be adapted for use in identifying any means to isolate a vehicle that may be of interest to police for tracking purposes. When connected to nationwide DMV or DDS databases, they can also be matched with vehicle owner records, and flag drivers known to have outstanding criminal warrants for failure to appear, or be driving on a suspended driver’s license.

These new passive tracking and scanning systems make it much more difficult to get away with a failure to appear in court that generates a criminal warrant. And it makes it much more dangerous to attempt to drive while your license is under suspension.

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If you are facing criminal charges for failure to appear, driving on a suspended license, or any other criminal offense in Georgia, please contact us for a free case evaluation. There’s no obligation, and we can offer you some suggestions on your best opportunities to beat your case in court.