Morristown, Tennessee · June 2024
One character. Two grandparents were ordered out of their vehicle at gunpoint while their three year old granddaughter watched from the back seat.
You can keep your cameras. Not the way you are running them now.
Independent audit, policy, and verification training for agencies operating automated license plate readers. Thirty years in law enforcement. Twelve with DEA. Nothing to sell you.
Who this is for
Two people get asked. Usually neither one is ready.
Chiefs and sheriffs
Your program works. Make it defensible.
The cameras are rarely what fails in the coverage. Hotlist records, verification habits, and audit gaps are. All three are fixable before anyone asks.
City managers
You will be asked in public. Have the answers.
Councils are voting on these contracts across the country. The agencies that keep their programs walk in with documentation instead of assurances.
Sources
The problem
The cameras are rarely what fails.
The Institute for Justice compiled at least 27 documented cases since 2018 in which plate reader errors led to innocent people being pulled over, detained, or jailed. In close to two thirds of them, officers did not realize the mistake until after they had drawn their weapons.[1]
Only about a third of those were camera errors. The rest came from people. Wrong plates typed into the system. Recovered vehicles nobody removed from a hotlist. Alerts acted on without anyone confirming the read first.[1]
Oak Park, Illinois appears to be the only jurisdiction publishing regular error reports. In a typical period, a third or more of the stops prompted by a camera alert ended with the driver released because the underlying data was wrong.[2] Most agencies have no idea what their own number is, because nobody measures it.
Meanwhile more than 80 localities across 28 states have terminated or shut down their contracts,[3] and states have started legislating. Washington now restricts where data may be collected at all, and several agencies there switched their systems off rather than risk a violation.[4]
None of that is an argument against plate readers. It is an argument for running one that holds up to an audit, a records request, and a room full of residents.
Texas
If you run plate readers in Texas, you already signed something.
Texas has no plate reader statute. Four attempts to pass one died in committee. Most Texas chiefs will tell you the program is governed by department policy and not much else.
That is not right. Access to the state plate reader database and to the TCIC stolen plate feed comes through signed agreements with the Department of Public Safety, and those agreements carry real obligations. Mandatory sharing of your reads. A continuing duty of accuracy, not a one time check at entry. A three calendar day deadline to report unauthorized use. A DPS right to inspect and audit your records that survives for four years after you leave the program.
And on the hotlist side, a requirement to confirm every hit against live TCIC before acting, paired with an indemnity clause that puts false arrest liability on your agency alone.
I signed that agreement myself in 2015, as an elected constable. Most agencies signed theirs, filed it, and have not read it since.
The Texas pages
- What actually governs a Texas agency
- The DPS user agreement, clause by clause
- The four bills that did not pass
Working nationally. Texas is where the work runs deepest.
Services
Five ways I work with agencies
Program audit
What your system is doing, who is querying it, and what a records request would surface tomorrow.
Hotlist governance
Recovered vehicles still flagged. Plates entered by mistake and never removed. A records problem with a records fix.
Verification training
Confirming a read before acting on it, documenting the confirmation, and what to do when the plate does not match.
Policy and compliance
A written policy that matches what actually governs you, whether that is a statute or an access agreement.
Vendor evaluation
Data ownership, export rights, sharing defaults, and audit access, reviewed before signature.
Method
How a review works
- 1
Records pull
Query logs, hotlist sources, sharing settings, signed access agreements, written policy, and training records.
- 2
Findings
What the data shows, sourced and dated. Nothing stated more confidently than the evidence supports.
- 3
Remediation plan
Ordered by risk. Anything that would surface in a public meeting gets handled first.
- 4
Training and policy
Verification instruction for officers, and a written policy that matches your actual obligations.
- 5
Second look
A follow up after ninety days to confirm the fixes held.
Four questions before your next council meeting
- Can you produce a query log showing who searched your data in the last twelve months?
- Do you know whether out of state or federal agencies can see your scans right now?
- When did anyone last check your hotlist for recovered or cleared vehicles?
- Does your written policy match what your access agreements actually require?
If any answer is a maybe, that is the finding. The full guide runs through what a council will ask.
Common questions
What agencies ask first
Are you here to tell us to shut the program down?
No. Most programs can be run lawfully and defensibly. The agencies losing their contracts are generally not the ones with the worst technology. They are the ones who could not answer basic questions in public.
Do you sell or represent a camera system?
No. I do not resell hardware, take vendor commissions, or hold a distribution agreement for any plate reader product. If a review points toward changing vendors, I have no stake in which one you pick.
What is the most common finding?
Hotlist records nobody cleared. Recovered vehicles still flagged, and plates entered by mistake and never removed. It produces repeat stops on innocent drivers, it is entirely preventable, and it has nothing to do with which camera you bought.
Do you only work in Texas?
No. The practice works nationally. Texas is where the deepest work has been done and where I can speak to the access agreements from having signed one, so that is where the site goes furthest into detail.
How long does a review take?
Most agencies have findings within three weeks of the records pull. How long remediation takes depends on what turns up.