A West Virginia man was arrested Friday afternoon after Chambersburg police were tipped off to a stolen vehicle entering the borough.
Michael Shawn Barnes, 55, of Martinsburg, W.Va., is in Franklin County Jail this weekend, charged with receiving stolen property, a third degree felony.
Police received an alert at 12:27 p.m. Friday that the Department’s License Plate Readers recorded a stolen vehicle traveling into the Borough of Chambersburg. The vehicle was reportedly stolen from West Virginia.
Officers located the vehicle in the area of McDonald’s on Lincoln Way East. Barnes was driving it. The vehicle was confirmed as stolen and Barnes was arrested for receiving stolen property.
By 3:15 p.m. Friday, Barnes was being arraigned by Magisterial District Judge Glenn Manns, who set his bail at $25,000.
The license plate readers, located at strategic locations around town, are just part of the latest technology assisting borough police officers doing their jobs.
Three main types of technology helped Chambersburg Police in the last few years. That technology includes:
- Downtown surveillance cameras,
- License plate reader cameras and
- CRIMEWATCH®, a website that distributes information about crimes and accepts anonymous tips.
According to Police Chief Ron Camacho, the LPRs (license plate reader cameras) assisted officers in more than 120 investigations in their first year of use.
Those investigations range from DUIs, to locating wanted people and stopping a stolen vehicle that contained a large amount of drugs. They were also instrumental in solving a federal ATM skimming case.
The downtown cameras assisted in a bank robbery, burglary and robbery investigation.
Police regularly receive tips as a result of CRIMEWATCH® posts, making it possible to solve both violent and non-violent crimes quickly with citizen help.
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