Cars, Cops & Criminals

Cops from different police forces get together in Warwickshire for a massive crackdown on motorists who break the law by driving without a licence and insurance. Using a sophisticated automatic number plate recognition system connected to a special computer, police find stolen cars belonging to illegal immigrants and chemicals for making drugs. In the town of Luton, on the M1 Motorway, another team of police come across a man who has not had a driving licence for more than a year, and another individual with a counterfeit licence. As cops clamp down on the motorways, innocent motorists also come under pressure from crooks. When Andy Bird put his pride and joy, a rare silver Vauxhall Monaro, on a website for car lovers he ended up being stopped and questioned by the police about an armed robbery which had been committed while his vehicle was parked at the station car park. The crooks had stolen his number plate to replace their plates on the getaway car. A young mother from Derbyshire could not understand why she was being sent congestion charges from London area until she saw a color photograph of the car that was committing the offences, but it still wasn’t easy to prove that it was not her! As the call is made to toughen up the laws that let over 42,000 outlets supply number plates in the UK, we look at the Swedish system where there is only one supplier and they only send the plates to the address on people’s tax form