Recording License Plates A Snap

Supervisory Customs Inspector Joseph Misenhelter and Under Secretary for Enforcement Jimmy Gurule observe traffic passing through the LPRs.

Keeping an eye on travelers in approaching vehicles while locating and manually entering license plate numbers is a especially challenging task for Customs inspectors. Correct entry of these plates is critical in ensuring they are crosschecked in the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS) and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) databases for possible matches with potential criminal suspects. While inspectors have an excellent record of meeting this challenge, Customs continues to search for ways to make our data more accurate and the inspector's job safer - the latest development toward that goal is the Customs License Plate Readers (LPR) System.

Manual entry of plates compromises eye contact with approaching traffic. With the LPR reading and recording vehicle plates, the Customs inspector can give more attention to other vital border inspection duties like maintaining eye contact with the vehicle, and its occupants. Years in development, the LPR has demonstrated reading accuracy of over 90 percent of vehicle license plates, whether traffic is incoming or outgoing.

The LPR includes five different components that help capture license plate data and convert it to an electronic format to cross check the TECS and NCIC databases for possible record matches. On average, the complete process takes less than a second.

To date, 281 LPRs have been installed and are operating along the Northern and Southern borders.

Posted by: John Source