The San Jose Mercury News reports that the government of San Jose is contemplating the use of garbage trucks as a platform for mounting license plate readers (archived). The plan involves piping data collected from garbage truck mounted surveillance equipment directly to the San Jose police department. Four police cars operated by the San Jose police department already are fitted with license plate readers, but expanding their deployment to the city's sanitation livery would allow for complete coverage of all of the city's streets every week. San Jose is currently currently struggling with ways to leverage technology to counteract the personnel losses in its police department which has roughly 950 officers this year, a number which is expected to contract to 800 officers sometime next year. San Jose has in the past been referred to as an unofficial "Capital" of Silicon Valley. Technology firms with a substantial presence in San Jose include Adobe, Xilinx, Cisco, and the North American headquarters for Korean firm Samsung.