SUSPECTS are to have their fingerprints taken at the roadside - and have their details matched against 64million people within five minutes!

Lancashire Constabulary has been chosen to pilot new high-tech scanners.

The devices will be fitted on the dashboards of police vehicles and allow officers to fingerprint a suspect, with possible matches returned to the officer in minutes.

The ground-breaking tech-nology will help police speed up investigations by cross checking the suspects' identity with the central computer database, which currently holds 64 million prints.

Lancashire Constabulary is one of 10 chosen to trial the new system as part of a national project, codenamed Lantern, managed by the Police Information Technology Organ-isation.

Chief Insp Tracy O'Gara, head of Lancashire Constabulary's Road Policing Unit, said: "Lan-tern will provide us with a powerful tool to allow officers to make better informed decisions.

"It will speed up the process of establishing a person's identity, so they will know much more quickly whether an individual is wanted or dangerous."

It is hoped the system will deter travelling off-enders from using the county's roads and motorways to commit crimes.

At present an officer would take a minimum of two hours, taking an arrested person to a suitably equipped custody suite to be able to do this.

Chief Insp O'Gara added: "We are currently in the middle of our Operation Vault, which is a regional initiative safeguarding security vehicles delivering cash and protecting people working for security companies and commercial premises like banks and post offices.

"Lantern will not only make it easier for us to establish the identities of people we stop but it will also make it clear to criminals that there is no hiding place for them on Lancashire's roads."

A spokesman for human rights organisation Liberty said: "We heard about this some time ago and have been following this.

"The police don't have new or extended powers, it's only the technology that's new so they won't be able to force people to give their fingerprints so we have no objection to it."

The Lantern scheme is also being piloted at Bedfordshire Police, British Transport Police, Essex Police, Hertfordshire Constabulary, Metropolitan Police, North Wales Police, Northamptonshire Police, West Midlands Police and West Yorkshire Police.

The cost of the scheme nationally will be £2.3million.