That's what city police used to have to do with their patrol cars before running checks on a car they wanted to stop.

Whether they were checking to see if the car was stolen, or whether its driver was a wanted man, department policy forced officers to stop their cars to type information into their laptop computers.

But for more than a year, software developed by a city auxiliary police officer has talked to officers while they drive, making traffic stops and ticket-writing more efficient and much safer.

Now, the Virtual Partner software that could once be found inside only Delray Beach patrol cars has captured the attention of 20 law enforcement agencies statewide, including the Boca Raton Police Department.

"Now they have all the information before they ever pull them over," Delray Beach police Maj. Will McCollum said.

That lets an officer know whether he's walking into a potentially dangerous situation, such as stopping the driver of a stolen car, and allows the officer to call for backup before stopping the car. The officer has to type in only the six-characters of the license plate, which doesn't require pulling over.

Boca Raton paid $24,750 for the technology and officer training.

Jeff Rubenstein, a volunteer officer for the past five years, says his creation has been so well received, he expects agencies all over the country to buy into it.

"It reads out all the pertinent information aloud, so the officer doesn't have to look at the screen," Rubenstein said.

After an officer types in the license plate number, it's often Rubenstein's voice the officer hears, not a mechanical one.

The system, which uses the computers already in the car, processes the license plate. Then it automatically captures the driver license information of the owner and runs that, as well. A voice then announces the driver license status, any warrants and whether the car has been reported stolen. In addition, the computer automatically prints out tickets, often shaving 15 to 20 minutes off each stop, McCollum said. About 20 Delray Beach patrol cars out of 60 are outfitted with printers, as well as the software.

Rubenstein said he came up with the idea for an audible system the first time he worked a day shift in a patrol car and realized that it was nearly impossible to read information on a computer screen on a sunny day.

A 31-year-old attorney, Rubenstein is president and chief executive officer of Advanced Public Safety Inc., the software company that developed Virtual Partner.

He said he created the technology just to help officers in Delray Beach, but he turned it into a business when he noticed the interest from other agencies.

Once Rubenstein developed the "alpha version" of Virtual Partner, the product's first draft, which took a few months, officers Jamie Silverman and Vinny Gray helped test it to work out any bugs. The software evolved monthly over the next year, and its patent is pending, Rubenstein said.

"The biggest thing that it's done for us is it's taken the officers who were somewhat tentative about using it and made them into champions," McCollum said. "We now have officers who are saying, 'I want to be next.' "