Image by Flickr user mrjoro Image by 20090304-camera.jpg

The North Charleston Police Department hopes to get a leg up on the bad guys by being the first agency in South Carolina to use an in-car camera system to track and detect stolen vehicles via their license plates.

The Post and Courier has much more on the new (and expensive) technology.

The chief of police, Jon Zumalt, seems confident that the camera system will be a success, but concedes that there is always room improvement:

The main weakness is that the vehicle database used is not updated as regularly as officers hoped.

According to the article, since the department's addition of the scanning technology last May, at least three other agencies have followed suit.

Click through to The Post and Courier to get the scoop on the new eye-in-the-road.