City Council will decide June 5 whether to continue the Austin Police Department's use of hundreds of data-collecting license plate scanners citywide, an initiative that's contributed to scores of arrests over the past year while raising concerns over mass surveillance and data misuse.

How we got here

Automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, rapidly scan license plate information and match it with law enforcement "hot lists" of vehicle thefts and serious crimes. APD's use of ALPR cameras was halted by city officials back in 2020, and after years on hold, city officials considered restoring ALPRs in 2022.

After further discussion focused on new guardrails for the collection and use of Austinites' data, council officially moved to reboot the program in a trial format several months later. A one-year, $114,000 pilot program began last March under new APD policies, with a requirement that it be audited and reviewed by council before it could be continued.

Officials temporarily extended the pilot through the spring while the audit process wrapped up and those findings were publicly presented last month ahead of a final vote to extend the program. Hundreds of cameras scanned tens of millions of license plates around Austin through the pilot, leading to more than 160 arrests and 130 prosecutions, according to city auditors.The approach

As council weighs the future of ALPRs in town, police leaders have stressed the program's ongoing importance to law enforcement and its contribution to solving a wide range of crimes.

Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis has said she supports the system as a critical technology for crime reduction efforts. APD Assistant Chief Scott Askew told council members June 3 that ALPRs helped with dozens of murder, robbery, sex crime and auto theft cases in the past year—investigations that could have been slowed or derailed without the system.

“We do not have enough officers to affect the job that we would prefer to do without the use of technology to supplement the effectiveness and efficiency of the cops that are out in the street on a daily basis," Askew said. "That does not mean that we’re not trying to get justice for our victims, we absolutely are, we’re just more successful when we have technology such as ALPR to do it."

At the same time, many council members and residents have called for the program's cancelation this spring given worries about privacy abuses by the city's ALPR vendors: public safety technology companies Flock Safety and Axon Enterprise, Inc. Concerns have also centered on increasing federal surveillance and the potential for data collected around Austin to be shared with agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—an outcome local officials have said they want to avoid.

"[T]here are tremendous potential negative impacts that arise from allowing our City to continue to collaborate with surveillance companies that are actively working with the federal administration to surveil Americans, capture immigrant workers and families, and retaliate against protected First Amendment activities," council member Mike Siegel wrote on officials' message board last week.

Diving in deeper

Council revived APD's ALPR program with new policies that:

• Limit its use to specific criminal investigations
• Restrict data access within the department
• Track any data requests from outside law enforcement agencies
• Require all collected data to be deleted within a week
• Mandate regular police officer training on the technology and data use

However, the recent audit prompted questions about whether APD and vendors like Flock are operating within the council-outlined guardrails.

For example, provisions in the city's contract with Flock may allow the company to indefinitely use and share locally collected information for any reason. Askew said city representatives are now working with Flock to strike language that runs contrary to Austin policies, although Siegel remained skeptical that the changes would protect Austin's data from outside access.

“I think this shows that despite best efforts, despite good faith, that we can’t trust Flock with our data. That even under the amended contract that’s being proposed they will still have, within this window, the ability to feed all of our data into their AI system and use it for all of their products across the country," he said.

Despite APD policy limiting ALPR use to certain crimes only, city police officers may have also widely misused ALPRs during their first year back on the streets. Siegel said Askew confirmed that, of roughly 65,300 "hot list" searches conducted during the pilot, more than 11,500 were made for reasons that didn't comply with City Council's direction.

Askew acknowledged that gap, and said the department is working on corrections and updates to policy in line with suggested improvements from city auditors.

“We are not hiding from our missteps," he said. "We’ve absolutely got room for improvement, and we’ve absolutely got some employees that didn’t either understand or misinterpreted policy in their training. And we are working to address those issues now.”

Askew also referenced recent media coverage of Flock cameras' involvement in abortion- and immigration-related enforcement. He and Davis both said they appreciate the fears of Austin immigrants and others who could be affected, but that those outcomes wouldn't be possible in Austin given the city's program limits and intentions.

"When you add in ... talking about this administration and what can come and all the what-ifs, I understand that. But I do think, again, that ... we can be good stewards of this and do good with it and make some exceptional, exceptional dents around crime and what it takes to truly make this, Austin, the safest city in America," Davis said.

What they're saying

Elected officials expressed varying degrees of unease with the program so far. Council member Krista Laine said she hopes to avoid further negative impacts her friends and neighbors have experienced under President Donald Trump's administration, especially in her Northwest Austin community that's home to many immigrants.

"I very well see the slippery slope, and how this could very rapidly shift the thinking of constituents in my district," she said.

Council member Chito Vela said that, while the program carries privacy concerns, cameras and scanning technologies are already widely in use across the private sector and places like banks or grocery stores in Austin. And council member Marc Duchen, an immigrant himself, said he hoped to weigh the benefits, like aiding crime victims, against any broader concerns with companies like Flock. He suggested seeking out other vendors to address those worries, while keeping the technology in place.

Residents testifying at council's June 3 work session were all opposed to the program's extension, with several noting the current political climate and possible outcomes for immigrant communities.

“With all the laws and the regulation of this current government, we are always fearful of going to work or taking our children to school because we never know if we’re going to go back home," Southeast Austinite Sulma Franco said through a translator. "We know that APD is legally bound to share the data with ICE and other federal agencies through the [Austin Regional Intelligence Center]."

Resident Annie Compton agreed, saying that while the technology could prove useful it also opens the door to outside enforcement that locals don't want to see.

“Under normal times, I would possibly support this tool. These are not normal times," she said. "This system would be a gift to ICE and a threat to us, our neighbors, friends and fellow Austinites."