1. A method of identifying license plate numbers, using an electronic camera mounted on a surveillance vehicle, comprising the steps of a) capturing a video image with said electronic camera; b) converting character sequence groups within said image to machine readable format using a processor having an optical character recognition engine; c) comparing said character sequence groups with license plate numbers in a database in order to find a matching license plate number, said license plate numbers in said database each having an associated record; and d) displaying said matching license plate number and associated record on a display device in said surveillance vehicle, whereby a license plate number of any vehicle extant within a field of view of said electronic camera is interpreted as a character sequence group, the character sequence group found in the image is converted to machine readable format by said optical character recognition engine and compared with said database, and any matching license plate number and associated record is displayed within said surveillance vehicle.