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Operation Utah success
Posted on 27/03/2009
Operation Utah success
Officers stopped over 200 vehicles in one of the biggest ever campaigns undertaken by Leicestershire Constabulary to tackle criminals using the roads.
Nine people were arrested over the two day operation which was held on both the North and South areas of the county. On Wednesday (March 25) officers positioned Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras on all main routes into the Leicester Forest East area, with the intention of identifying and catching criminals who had used their cars in crimes.
All the main arterial routes into Loughborough were covered by the cameras in a ‘ring of steel’ the following day (Thursday 26 March).
The ANPR cameras work by scanning vehicle registrations and checking them against various databases including the Police National Computer. Any suspicious vehicles were intercepted and taken to specially cordoned off areas to be dealt with by officers from a number of different agencies.
Inspector Marc Simons, who coordinated the operation on the South area, said: “It is the first time we have had this sort of thing in Leicestershire and because of its success, we are likely to run something similar in the future.
"We targeted criminals through the use of their vehicles – it is not aimed at targeting motorists per se. All cars that passed the cameras were checked for outstanding fines, being the suspect for a crime, tax and insurance. If they were flagged up, we pulled them over.
“The vehicles were then inspected by police officers, but also HM courts, revenue and customers, DVLA, vehicle operator services agency (VOSA) and taxi licensing.
“Using the combined experience and intelligence gathered from all of the agencies was instrumental in the making this operation a success.”
In total, 17 vehicles were seized, five vehicles were searched for drugs by the police dog handling unit, HM Courts recovered nearly £3000 in unpaid fines, and four vehicles were found to be running on red diesel.