NY mobile plate hunter

Something to ponder. There will be a lot other uses coming and the "photo blocker " stuff doesn't work with this. Also this will put a greater push on having both plates on NYS cars.




Crime Beat: License plate readers help track suspects
Police used high-tech camera in Morey case

A high-tech camera mounted on a state trooper's car played a key role in solving one of Dutchess County's most grisly crimes, the Jan. 19 murders of the Morey family in Fishkill.


The president of the company that makes the cameras said last week he was glad the device, called the Mobile Plate Hunter 900, had helped prosecutors convict Fishkill resident Mark Serrano of first-degree murder.


"That was gratifying, that's as good a review as we'll get for these units," said Mark Windover, chairman of Remington-Elsag Inc., the Brewster-based firm that manufactures the license-plate readers.


During Serrano's trial last month in the county courthouse in Poughkeepsie, a representative of Remington-Elsag, Todd Child, testified a Mobile Plate Hunter had been installed on the roof of a troop car that was patrolling Route 82 near the Morey family home early on the morning of Jan. 19. Child said the device takes 20 pictures per second of anything it "sees" that has the shape of a license plate.


Once Serrano became a suspect in the Morey homicides, investigators had a state police computer expert, Sgt. Ira Promisel, search data collected by the high-tech camera on the trooper car that had been in the area that morning.


Promisel testified he found a photo of a Nissan X-Terra with Serrano's license plate clearly visible at the bottom of the frame. He said he searched data from a global positioning system (GPS) in the trooper car. He determined the picture of Serrano's car captured by the Mobile Plate Hunter had been taken about 500 feet from the Moreys' house at 1:14 a.m. Jan. 19. As a result, prosecutors said, Serrano could not deny he had been in the vicinity of the house on the morning the murders took place.

Windover said the technology used in the Mobile Plate Hunter was developed by the Elsag Corp. in the 1990s, before the firm merged with Remington Small Arms Corp. in the United States.

"Elsag was an Italian firm that had developed algorithms that read handwritten postcards for the Italian postal service," Windover said. "When Remington merged with Elsag in 2004, we refined the technology here. We figured if it could read rectangular postcards, it could read license plates."


Use has spread
Since the prototype was developed and production of the Mobile Plate Hunter began in 2005, the New York State Police has purchased several units for each troop. About 250 police agencies in 26 states use the Plate Hunter, Windover said.

Trooper Roy Jacobsen, based at Troop K Headquarters in Pleasant Valley, said eight cars in the troop are equipped with the devices. Troopers assigned to those cars are given a four-hour course on how to use them.
Promisel said the Mobile Plate Hunter is used primarily to spot stolen cars or to locate motorists who are driving while their licenses have been suspended.
"But obviously, it has many uses," Promisel said. "It helped (with the Serrano case), and it benefits the public in many ways."