The drivers from Connecticut state has been pulled over by Connecticut State Police for the use of license plate scanners mounted on cruisers has skyrocketed in past few years.

The high tech cameras mounted on cruisers scanned as many as 1,800 license plates a minute and instantly run through databases.

The Associated Press show troopers stopped 6,800 drivers, after being alerted by the special cameras which receive information from criminal and motor vehicle databases, last year. About 2,400 drivers have been stopped this year and 1,600 drivers in 2014.  

Officially, State police have the cameras known as license plate readers or LPRs mounted on 20 of the 400 cruisers assigned to patrol. The devices will receive information about the wanted people, missing people, stolen vehicles, unregistered vehicles and violations from Department of Motor Vehicles and police databases, and they instantly alert troopers.

"Not only do LPRs allow troopers to monitor a higher volume of traffic for vehicles involved in incidents as serious as Amber Alerts, stolen cars and wanted persons, it allows them to do so in a safer and more efficient manner,"  said Col. Alaric Fox, the state police commander.  

Police departments across the country, including many municipal departments in Connecticut, are using the scanners. however, state police do not fully track the outcomes of the traffic stops initiated by LPRs.  It is not exactly clear that how many people are being arrested or cited for which crimes and violations.

State police records showed only 35 arrested in 2014, 43 arrested in last year and 25 arrested so far this year. Officials said, there are no details on what the arrests were for, except for a few cases noted in police news releases.  

The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut said, state police have a model policy with a short data retention period of 90 days with an exception for license plates linked to crimes.

"There's a place for it, but there's not a need to keep this data for an extended period," said David McGuire, the state ACLU's legislative and policy director.

McGuire said, he believed most drivers in the state have had their license plates scanned by state and local police. After a 2012 public records request, he found his name four times in a database kept by 10 departments in the Hartford area. The database included more than 3 million license plate scans.

- Mayuka.