Salinas-Monterey CHP putting new license plate scanner to use

Finding your stolen Toyota in the middle of Nowheresville could be a tough task. The California Highway Patrol’s new toy grabs license plates quicker than you can spot ’em.

“For years the Salinas area and Monterey County has been a hot spot for stolen vehicles,” said Jaime Rios, CHP’s public information officer.

For example, in Salinas, CHP has reported 12 stolen vehicles in June and 45 in July. While News Channel 5 was on the road with CHP for about an hour there were four reported stolen.

Rios said a lot of the stolen cars in the Monterey, Salinas area are pre-2002 Toyotas and Hondas because of the lack of security that they have.

Outfitted with multiple cameras, CHP’s brand new patrol car takes pictures of each license plate it passes then alerts officers if the car is reported stolen.

“For people that are worried about their privacy and about their licenses being scanned,” Rios said, “if it’s not stolen, then that information is purged.”

Hollister police got the license plate scanners two years ago and Santa Cruz police is in the process of getting them now.

CHP says this technology can also help with locating cars associated with Amber Alerts. If this technology proves to be successful, CHP could be looking at outfitting more vehicles with these scanners.

After a month of being in use, Rios said they’ve located one stolen vehicle and made an arrest associated with that vehicle.