New camera checks rego in a flash.

[Charliewool]

Taken from Northern Star (Ballina, Byron)... Scarey stuff.

NEXT time you drive past a couple of cops with a camera it might not be just your speed they’re checking.

New Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) also allows them to instantly check the car’s registration to find out if it has been stolen.

And NSW’s first large-scale campaign using the device, conducted by the TweedByron highway patrol last month, has had staggering results.

During operation Legitimate, police issued 1005 infringements and laid 195 charges for offences including unlicensed driving, unregistered vehicles, suspended driving and drink driving.



Byron highway patrol’s Sergeant Greg Swindells said he was ‘overawed’ by the results of the operation.

"When you’re detecting people driving unregistered vehicles, that often goes hand-in-hand with detecting a range of other offences too," said Sgt Swindells.

"We saw a huge increase in the number of offences we detected over what we’d normally get.

"If you drive past and your plates check out, fine then happy days, off you go.

"But if you’re driving an unregistered or stolen car, then we’ll have a car off to intercept you straight away.

"It’s also useful to detect people who have put stolen plates on their car."

Each unit involved in operation Legitimate comprised five officers — two stationary to man the ANPR and three in patrol cars — enabling them to chase down every offender.

ANPR can be used on a fixed mount or, as in this case, a portable tripod and can check one number plate every second on cars going up to 160km/h.

The ANPR’s camera is linked to a laptop, which uses image recognition technology to decipher the characters in the number plate. It then consults an online database to see whether the car is registered or stolen.

Now that Tweed-Byron has had its turn with the device, it is off to do checks in an un-named command — but it will be back.

"We’ll be using it periodically in the command — but we’re not going to say when," Sgt Swindells said.