1. An apparatus for finding and identifying an image of a license plate of a predetermined class that bears characters and that is mounted on a vehicles, comprising: means for producing an image that includes the license plate; means for scanning the image and identifying a block of the image that meets predetermined frequency that is above a selected non-zero threshold, said threshold being selected to correspond to the frequency expected to be produced by scanning across the characters of any license plate of the predetermined class; and decision means for comparing the block to second criteria to determine and indicate whether a block is an image of the license plate characters.