Car thieves, beware: Big Brother is watching you with a vengeance.

Those high-tech license-plate readers mounted on NYPD patrol cars are helping cops recover hundreds more stolen vehicles and put bad guys behind bars, officials said.

The NYPD uses about 100 mobile license-plate readers throughout the city. The devices actively work while cops patrol, scanning the license plates of dozens of parked and moving vehicles at a time.

The cameras then feed those numbers into a central database, which is able to identify plate numbers of vehicles that have been reported stolen, used in a crime or that have been put on a watch list or law-enforcement warning system, such as interstate AMBER alerts.

The program, which began in 2006 with just a dozen cameras, has helped cops recover 2,683 stolen vehicles to date — nearly two cars a day — and has led to as many arrests, including 1,000 busts for felony crimes, police said.

Nearly 800 thieves have been caught in the act behind the wheel. The devices also have helped cops recover 11 weapons, police said.

So far this year, there have been 5,331 cars reported stolen citywide, a .09 percent increase over the same period last year, according to the NYPD.

The license-plate readers, both mobile and stationary, also are part of the NYPD’s downtown “Ring of Steel” anti-terror security measures, which include a network of surveillance cameras to track the movement of vehicles in lower Manhattan’s Financial District.

The readers, which are already part of dedicated patrols in Midtown, will increase in numbers as part of the planned Midtown security initiative, which plans to replicate downtown’s security measures.

(Source: NY Post)