PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — They’re already on highways and police cars. Soon, the Delaware River Port Authority’s four bridges will have them too.
The DRPA is allowing New Jersey State Police to install license plate scanners on the Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Betsy Ross and Commodore Barry bridges — not to catch speeders or toll cheats, but to help law enforcement locate cars in criminal investigations or for homeland security concerns.
“They will be able to read and identify license plates that may be of interest to law enforcement — whether they’re wanted for certain crimes, whether they’re part of a homeland security concern,” said Robert Finnegan, DRPA chief security and safety officer.
He said law enforcement agencies share the information gathered through the scanners.
“The data is collected and stored in a database with the New Jersey State Police that our law enforcement and plenty of other agencies in the area have access to,” he explained.
The readers are expected to operate in both the east and westbound directions, though Finnegan wouldn’t disclose precisely where they would be installed.
Last year, New Jersey allocated $10 million to police in all 21 counties to pay for plate readers. Finnegan expects the devices to be installed on the DRPA bridges by late spring or early summer.