DRUG dealers, thieves and burglars are to be targeted by North Yorkshire Police with the help of new hi-tech number plate scanning equipment.

From next week criminals travelling on the county's roads will be targeted by the force, which is one of 23 to pilot the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system.

Officers in a covert van, backed up by marked police vehicles, will use the equipment to scan vehicle number plates and, via a direct link to the national police computer, spot the criminals.

Car tax dodgers will among those targeted, as they have often committed other offences, said Detective Inspector Ian Wills, who is heading the project.

Det Insp Wills said: "Quite often the criminal element are less likely to tax their car.

"When you think about it they are about making money, maybe not legally, and in some cases they are not going to have their car taxed.

"We have a problem with travelling criminals coming in from outside the county, but if you tax and insure your car, you don't use it for criminal activity and you are not committing a traffic offence when our patrols see you, the chances of you being stopped are minimal."

The ANPR system can check up to 3,000 number plates per hour on vehicles travelling up to 100 mph.

They are checked against the police national computer and the DVLA database.

The system, which costs £100,000, will be part-funded by revenue raised from the issue of fixed penalty tickets for motoring offences, but the majority of funding will come from the increase in council tax precept.

Updated: 10:15 Friday, May 30, 2003