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It will revolutionise policing – the view of Kent Police’s Chief Constable, who is hailing new technology being trialled in Kent.

Criminals using the county’s roads illegally can now be located and stopped faster than ever before thanks to new in-car automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) developments.

Officers in patrol vehicles are given a live feed from ANPR cameras around the county. This means when a suspected vehicle is flagged up the nearest patrol car can react to them more quickly.

It also means only vehicles suspected of being involved in crime are stopped, rather than wasting time checking innocent people.

Chief Constable Mike Fuller said: “This new technology is going to revolutionise the way we police.

“The stopping of vehicles will be far more intelligence-led than it ever has been before.

“Law-abiding people have nothing to fear from this technology but criminals need to be very concerned.

“If you try to defeat it by changing your number plate, cloning it or defacing it you will only draw yourself to the attention of police and you will be stopped.

“This development will enable officers to carry out 21st century policing.

Kent Police hope to extend the technology across the county in the next six months.

Chief Inspector Richard Watson explained: “A camera takes a picture of a vehicles number plate, the number plate is then digitised and that digital image is then converted and checked against a number of databases.

“Previously if a vehicle was flagged up by ANPR a patrol car would have to have been located by radio and then a message sent out to that car to find and check the vehicle.

“Now mobile data terminals within the cars themselves give officers a live feed of information so they can react more quickly.”

Police Constable Warren Jarvis who helped trial the technology said: “Police officers can only be in one place at one time when on patrol.

“With the number of cameras we have in Maidstone we have eyes everywhere, and now this technology tells us where a suspected vehicle is in real time helping us catch criminals.”