UPDATED 6:50 p.m. (06/27):
Police are crediting a new tool that helped them track down a stolen car.
Margarito Gomez Serena Jr. of Moorhead was arrested and is charged with possession of a stolen car.
Tuesday morning West Fargo police were alerted the car was stolen from a rental agency at Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport last year.
It is all thanks to an automated license plate reader, a system first added to a West Fargo patrol car a couple of years ago.
As you are driving along, two cameras on the vehicle are capturing the license plates of the cars on the road. Two side-mount cameras take photos of parked cars. Driving at 15 miles per hour, the two side-mount cameras are able to read 99 percent of the license plates.
Once an image of the plate has been captured, that information is run through a national database of wanted or stolen vehicles. If stolen, like the one Tuesday morning, the system will alert an officer, who makes sure it's right.
The automated system also allows officers to be more efficient. Lt. Duane Sall says, "As I'm trying to watch for a traffic violation or a safety concern somewhere else or respond to a call, it's hard to multi-task that many different things."
West Fargo now has two units to watch even more closely. "I don't see this application as Big Brother watching you because they're really not watching you, they're just looking at a plate that is owned by the state," says Sall.
Sall thinks it is a win-win for everyone in society in general because it takes uninsured drivers off the road.
Police in Fargo and the Cass County Sheriff's Department also have the readers.
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Tuesday, June 26 just after 8:00 AM, West Fargo Police received notice that a stolen vehicle had just passed a West Fargo Police Department vehicle equipped with an Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR).
The ALPR alerted officers to the suspect vehicle as being entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) data base as stolen in Minnesota.
The officers pulled over the driver, Margarito Gomez Serena Jr., 38, of Moorhead. He was arrested for Possession of a Stolen Vehicle and Driving Under Revocation. He was taken to the Cass County Jail.
The vehicle, a 2012 Dodge Avenger, had been reported stolen from a car rental agency at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport in May 2012.
The West Fargo and Fargo Police Departments as well as the Cass County Sheriff's Office currently have ALPR units. The ALPR is a computer based system which uses vehicle mounted cameras to scan motor vehicle license plates.
The computer compares the scanned license plate images against the NCIC data base containing a list of wanted or stolen vehicles. If a match exists an alarm is sent to the officer. The officer is responsible for visually comparing the scanned image to the actual license plate. The officer must also request a confirmation of the stolen vehicle record through the reporting agency.
West Fargo Police installed their first ALPR in May 2010. This was the first arrest made in the F-M area using the ALPR
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