San Jose, California, has a problem,

more police officers are leaving the force than new ones can be trained to replace them,

which means that over the next two years the San Jose Police Department will shrink to two-thirds its size that it was in 2008, just 800 or so officer in a population of one million, great for the criminal element but not so good for the law abiding citizens, so to combat one aspect of crime the city has come up with a neat idea, already patrolling streets there are a number of non-police vehicles, like garbage trucks, the thought is to mount license plate readers on theses and other privately or city owned trucks to help reduce car theft, the operatives of the trucks have no input to the operation, they just go about their job as normal whilst the scanner sends news of stolen vehicles to law enforcement officers to take on the case, the good news is that the vehicles are already in operation, so there is no extra budget to find for petrol and labour expenses, it seems like such a good idea, I wonder if it will happen and if so will other cities follow suit?