Third eye for the police

A webcam in the front bumper of a police car could feed the video frames to an optical character recognition software which would fish out license plate numbers of the passing vehicles in near real time and continuously search the database of stolen vehicles as well as owners with suspended licenses or multiple unpaid parking tickets (etc.). Such a system installed on multiple vehicles could work continuously, logging the GPS location of the vehicle and the time of the match even while the police car is parked.

Update (May 16th, '06): Came across this article about Automatic Numberplate Recognition (ANPR) cameras already installed and in use in London. I guess I was a couple of years late with this, although installing these into police cars which circulate around the city seems like the next logical step...

Update 2: I suspect Nice Systems are thinking about this

Update 3: ...and here is the GLAVID / Platefinder product from g2tactics (noticed in July 2006 via the Wired LPR article; apparently there was a previous Wired LPR article as well)

Update 4: an e-mail about this to friends triggered a google ad to SeeCar License Plate Recognition system apparently being developed since 2003