These days, Officer Paul Talley patrols the streets of St. Albans in a cruiser equipped with a pair of high-tech infrared cameras that are the eyes for a new police tool.
"There's the CPU for itself. All of that," he said. "That is the brains."
The tool is called a license plate reader or LPR for short.
"And every car I drive by or drives by me, I'll get their license plates," he explained.
The cameras can photograph and store the images of up to 3,000 license plates per minute of every vehicle the cruiser passes-- moving or parked-- on both sides of the road.
The plates and photos of the vehicles are instantly displayed, one-by-one, on a monitor next to the officer, but only after the plates have been compared at the speed of light with a data bank of plates on vehicles registered to scofflaw motorists and fugitives.
"Anybody who is suspended civilly or criminally, any vehicle that's not registered, anybody whose license is expired, and warrants out of Franklin County, any vehicles that are stolen," Talley listed. "It could be for a $25 parking ticket that you failed to pay a couple of years ago."
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