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Appian Technology Plc featured on Spotlight BBC South West news program

On Friday 28th January, Spotlight, the BBC South West news program featured Devon and Cornwall Police using Appian's Talon SP software to catch criminals on the road. The article below was published on the BBC news web site following the broadcast of the program.

A pilot scheme to arrest criminals on Torquay's roads has resulted in 16 arrests by police.

It uses Automatic License Plate Recognition technology (ALPR) to identify the vehicles of known drug dealers, burglars and drink drivers.

Cameras which scan number plates and a database of more than 8.5m plates were mounted on Torbay CCTV cameras. If a "wanted" vehicle passed the camera during the eight-day trial, a dedicated police team was alerted. Inspector Paddy Craig of Devon and Cornwall Police, said the arrests included a suspected paedophile, drugs users and the driver of a stolen vehicle.

Drugs seized

He said: "We are still getting used to the system and there is a lot of work to do, but the results so far have been very encouraging."

Four cameras were used in the pilot which has received £300,000 funding from the government to expand across Devon and Cornwall. ALPR can detect number plates even when vehicles are being driven at more than 100mph - and it can check up to 3,000 plates every hour.

The registration numbers are then checked against records from the DVLA, the Police National Computer and local intelligence computer systems. The Automatic License Plate Recognition cameras were first introduced in 2002 and are already operating in 23 police forces.

A six-month trial in nine forces in England and Wales from 2002-03 helped recover 300 stolen vehicles worth more than 2m, and led to more than 3,000 arrests. The scheme also led to the seizure of drugs worth £100,000 and stolen goods valued at £715,000.

Courtesy of the BBC