Highway Safety Initiatives: Criminal Arrest by License Plate

As so many other law enforcement officers do every day, Trooper Thomas A. Jones of the Wisconsin State Patrol executed a traffic stop about 8:30 a.m. on February 19, 2003, and remained alert to other vehicles in the vicinity. But Jones’s observation of a license plate associated with a suspect wanted in connection with a homicide in Kaukauna differentiated his morning from that of other law enforcers and earned him the grand prize in 3M’s 2003 Looking Beyond the License Plate program. The suspect was reported possibly to be armed with a shotgun or a rifle and to be suicidal.