In the UK all the police traffic cars automatically read every license plate as they drive along and check them to make sure they have insurance, that the owner hasn't been banned from driving, that they have paid their pollution tax, that the driver isn't wanted for something else, etc. If it sees one that isn't insured then it will alert the officer. $5,000 seems a small price to pay to get all the uninsured cars off the road. The police cars cost considerably more than that, as does the officer, the ANPR makes them considerably more effective.
They do need to be tested and approved and maybe calibrated so that the times and speeds they record can be used in court.
However that article actually says that these wont get ANPR and they wont even record all the time - only if the blue lights are on, if the officer chooses to turn them on! What if you want to record someone's unacceptable driving before pulling them over? I imagine the UK police probably use more video from without lights on than with.
Many of those videos are from the era of vacuum tube cameras and tape recording, from before data protection laws existed that would now stop the Police selling such stuff. And most, if not all the audio of screeching tyres and crashes is added and the speeds greatly exaggerated.
