Check on shopping centre visitors

All vehicles entering and leaving Bluewater were checked by police

About 20,000 cars entering and leaving a Kent shopping centre had their number plates scanned in a crime-fighting operation by police.

Officers were at the Bluewater shopping centre throughout Saturday, checking cars and details of ownership against a police database.

The operation was aimed at cracking down on all criminal offences.

Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology allows every number plate to be checked against a database.