Saturday night in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose, the assistant police chief tweeted out praise for their recently-upgraded Automatic License Plate Readers: Officers in Air3 [police helicopter], monitoring the ALPR system, got alerted to 3 stolen cars. They directed ground units to the cars. All 3 drivers in custody! No dangerous vehicle pursuits occurred, nor were they needed. 2 drivers tried to run away. But, you can't outrun a helicopter!" There's photos — one of the vehicles appears to be a U-Haul pickup truck — and the tweet drew exactly one response, from San Jose mayor Matt Mahan: "Nice job...! Appreciate the excellent police work and great to see ALPRs having an impact. Don't steal cars in San Jose!" Some context: The San Jose Spotlight noted that prior to last year license plate readers had been mounted exclusively on police patrol cars (and in use since 2006). But last year the San Jose Police Department launched a new "pilot program" with four cameras mounted at a busy intersection, that "captured nearly 300,000 plate scans in just the last month, according to city data." By August this had led to plans for 150 more stationary ALPR cameras,
