GREENE – Motorists driving with suspended registration beware, the Greene Police Department has added yet another tool to its traffic enforcement arsenal. Thanks to a state grant, the village PD is now the proud owner of an automatic license plate reader which can identify vehicles with suspended, revoked or stolen tags.

“There’s no getting away from it,” said Village of Greene Police Chief Steve Dutcher, who filed the grant application which made the purchase possible.

The equipment in question is a Mobile Plate Hunter 900, manufactured by ELSAG North America. The system, which was installed two weeks ago in the Dodge Durango driven by Officer Norm Shaffer, consists of two infrared scanners mounted to the SUV’s roof. Those scanners feed data to Shaffer’s laptop, which is synchronized daily with the state database.

The scanners are mounted so that one reads oncoming traffic, while the other is angled to scan parked cars, Shaffer explained, and are capable of reading up to 1,300 plates per second. As plates are scanned, they are referenced against the database. The system alerts the police officer if a tag is suspended, revoked or stolen.

Any suspensions are confirmed through dispatch before a ticket is issued, Shaffer reported, but “it in itself is probable cause for a stop.”