License Plate Scanner Use Becoming Widespread in Maryland

Charles County Maryland is getting on the bandwagon of police passive monitoring tools. Here's the article on the police use of license plate (tag) scanning technology for locating stolen vehicles, stolen or expired tags, and out of date emissions stickers. The device is also effective at locating cars who's owners may have suspended driver's licenses or outstanding warrants.

The device works by the video camera scanning and doing optical character recognition (OCR) on the plate images to translate it into numbers and letters. It then compares the license tag to an updated database of tag numbers with Motor Vehicle Administration flags. If there is a match, the officer inside is alerted via a laptop computer.

There are many interesting technical details in the article, including:

• There are two cameras in the standard setup, one pointed forward to scan oncoming traffic, and one on the right side to scan parked cars.
• The scanner works fine in the dark.
• If it can't distinguish between a 3 and an 8, it simply runs both combinations against its database.
• The device will scan approximately 3000-4000 tags over a typical 8 hour shift.
• The camera is linked to a GPS system, and logs all tags scanned and their location from the past 30 days. So they can look back on historical data if they wish to track your movement in the past.

The last one is particularly scary and big brother-ish. You are being watched all the time. And no doubt the 30 days is arbitrary. I'm sure they can save the data indefinitely if they want to.

The Maryland State police is training officers to operate this system on five additional vehicles. The day is fast approaching when all of you driving is tracked.

Maryland Pol Pleads Guilty to DUI

Kumar Barve, the majority leader in the Maryland House of Delegates, pleaded guilty to a first offense DUI. News reports here and here. He was sentenced in Montgomery County District Court.

Reports indicated he blew a .10 on a breath test, slightly above the legal limit of .08% BAC. Police reports suggested that he crossed a double yellow line, failed a "walk and turn" so-called field sobriety test. Officers also indictated that he smelled of alcohol, his eyes were bloodshot, his face flushed, and his speech was slurred, as they typically do in DUI arrests.
He received a standard sentence of a probation before judgement, which essentially means that the guilty finding will be recinded if he meets all the conditions of his probation. And he will be eligible to have the charges expunged in the future.
Other conditions of his probation include not drinking alcohol for 1 year, attending MADD meetings, and completing a 26 week alcohol awareness class.
Delegate Barve took full responsibility for his actions, and no one was harmed. We wish him the best, and understand that this is a mistake that anyone could make.
All in all, he got a reasonable, standard result for someone under the circumstances. A good DUI defense lawyer would be able to get a similar result for anyone under these circumstances who chose to plead guilty. There is no evidence at all that he received any judicial favoritism in this outcome.
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If you are charged with drunk driving/DUI/DWI in Maryland, please contact us for your free defense consultation. We can help you fight the charges and defend your license, or work to make sure you get the best and fairest deal under Maryland DUI laws. There is no obligation for our advice.

Increased Penalties for Speeding/Reckless Driving?

Michael Dresser at the Baltimore Sun thinks that people who speed are as bad as sex offenders.

That is certainly bad enough, but he also believes that Maryland should adopt Virginia's extremely tough reckless driving laws, and charge anyone speeding 20mph over the limit as a criminal. Currently, reckless driving in Maryland is typically a civil charge, though it can lead to a suspended license.

The fact is, tougher reckless driving laws do little to prevent so called "dangerous driving". The primary goal of most aggressive/reckless driving crackdown laws is revenue for the state. These laws are extremely profitable, and cost drivers thousands of dollars in fees, fines, lost work time due to court dates, increased insurance costs.

And there is absolutely no evidence that they make the roads safer.

Virginia tried to push the envelope even further when then enacted "abusive driver fees", a shameless effort that state officials admitted was merely to extract even more revenue from hapless citizens. That law was repealed after less than a year due to citizen outcry.

Maryland doesn't need to follow this same path in severely punishing relatively minor driving offenses.

For advice on a driving citation, traffic ticket or other criminal charge in Maryland, please contact us.