State Police were able to find Vester Le Flanigan when his rental car's license plate number was picked up by a trooper's License Plate Reader now that same surveillance technology is used in several departments all across the bay area we sent eight on your size Mark Douglas to pellis County to see how they work he is joining us now live with details on that hello Mark hello and good evening to you Keith this technology has been in use here in penis County for at least 10 years and it's really quite remarkable now cameras on Squad car s patrolling roads like Roosevelt Boulevard here capture the license plate images of every single vehicle they pass and if there's a warrant or alert of any kind connected to that plate Bingo but Ellis County Deputy Michael cin doesn't work alone his electronic partner a computerized License Plate Reader can spot trouble all day long without the deputy ever having to touch a button Sheriff Bob gualter calls it a force multiply fire it's running thousands of tags where the deputy would probably only be able to run one or in that time period suspended or revoked registration the camera system automatically archives plate numbers so when a deputy enters an alert for a particular plate the system will remember seeing it and even say where the encounter happened and when that's exactly how Virginia Troopers located TV crew killer Vester Flanigan you know that within 3 minutes ago you passed this guy otherwise you could have been searching miles and miles of an area for him USF assistant police chief Chris Daniel tells me his Department recently acquired the same technology so within seconds that officer is getting information back from the system to let them know that they have an alert Daniel insists it's useful for everything from capturing wanted felons to locating cars that students believe have been stolen but are actually just lost on campus more likely than not we're going to find that vehicle parked elsewhere cuz somebody just got disoriented Clearwater Police tell me this technology recently helped them stop and possibly saved the life of a suicidal man who had been listed as missing and endangered Keith well Mark going to play Devil's Advocate just a moment what about the Big Brother aspect of all this well unlike the NSA which collected all of those phone calls none of this raw data flows Upstream police only alert on warrants and Endangered Person and and people license irregularities and and as in the case of yesterday someone who is wanted for murder and in fact un his way to kill other people they stopped that so not what you would call widescale data mining by the government in this case all right Mark Douglas reporting live in Bellis County thank you Mark so what do you think