STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – In October 2023, a person went into a Sterling Heights business and stole a tip jar and then fled in a vehicle. Police arrested the suspect based on a partial license plate using technology that takes photos of license plates.
The Sterling Heights City Council will review purchasing six more license plate readers for its police department at the Aug. 6 meeting.
The “hotlist.”
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According to Flock Safety, the company that provided the license plate readers, the city of Sterling Heights has captured the license plates of nearly 900,000 vehicles in the last 30 days, as of July 25.
The technology allows police to be alerted in real time to vehicles on a “hotlist” which are wanted criminals, according to Flock Safety.
The city of Sterling Heights has a policy that prohibits use of the license plate reading technology for use in immigration enforcement, traffic enforcement, harassment or intimidation, or usage based solely on a protected class (race, sex religion) or personal use. The city rules state the data is used for law enforcement purposes and never sold to third parties. It can be shared with other law enforcement agencies. Flock Safety said there are 988 external organization with access to the data.
Red flags.
Many privacy organizations have raised red flags about automated license plate readers (ALPRs).
The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation spelled out its concerns with license plate readers on its website.
“ALPRs automatically capture all license plate numbers that come into view, along with the location, date, and time. The data, which includes photographs of the vehicle and sometimes its driver and passengers, is then uploaded to a central server,” EFF stated.
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The statement continued, “Taken in the aggregate, ALPR data can paint an intimate portrait of a driver’s life and even chill First Amendment protected activity. ALPR technology can be used to target drivers who visit sensitive places such as health centers, immigration clinics, gun shops, union halls, protests, or centers of religious worship. Drivers have no control over whether their vehicle displays a license plate because the government requires all car, truck, and motorcycle drivers to display license plates in public view. So it’s particularly disturbing that automatic license plate readers are used to track and record the movements of millions of ordinary people, even though the overwhelming majority are not connected to a crime.”