Mountain View looks to install automatic license plate readers to assist law enforcement investigations

Facing mixed reactions from the community, Mountain View is proposing to install automatic license plate cameras in the city in order to assist in police investigations and deter crime – a proposition that has some worried about privacy rights.

The City Council will consider a recommendation later this month to enter into a one-year lease agreement with Flock Safety, a company that sells automated license plate recognition (or ALPR) technology to law enforcement agencies and other public and private entities.

“Flock, essentially it’s a fixed or mobile camera system that takes photographs of passing vehicles,” said Mountain View Police Chief Mike Canfield, who presented the pilot program to the Public Safety Advisory Board on Thursday, April 25.

While several PSAB members lauded the implementation of ALPR cameras to assist in law enforcement efforts, others raised concerns about the potential misuse of the surveillance technology that could lead to privacy violations, particularly when used for regional and national crime investigation purposes.

“There are ways to do this without resorting to fear, making us feel like we have to allow everybody to see our data. So, I’ll just register my discomfort with the proposal to just give it up to everyone,” said advisory board member Kavita Aiyar, referring to the possibility of allowing hundreds of jurisdictions to access the images and data records.

If approved by the council, Mountain View plans to purchase 24 license plate cameras that will be placed at key intersections and thoroughfares in the city, specifically targeting major entry and exit points. The cameras will be positioned to take photographs only of the back of vehicles and not of drivers or other occupants, Canfield said, adding that the system was not equipped with facial recognition technology.

After a camera scans a license plate, the image then can be compared to a national database that stores the license plates of stolen vehicles or vehicles associated with individuals facing criminal charges. If a match is found, a real-time alert is activated to notify police of the location of the wanted vehicle, according to the advisory report.

The technology also can be used to assist longer-term investigations. The ALPR data will be stored for 30 days, allowing police to identify and locate vehicles associated with a crime after it has been committed.

“This allows us to look back in time within 30 days to query for specific vehicles that might be involved in a crime, and so it really helps us put together the missing piece,” said Mountain View Police Capt. Wahed Magee.

More than 1,000 cities and over 500 police departments across the country are using Flock ALPR cameras, according to the report. This includes nearly every city in Santa Clara County except for Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Cupertino. The report also identified two cities of roughly the same geographic size as Mountain View, Milpitas and Morgan Hill, that have installed automatic license plate cameras, resulting in a combined 268 arrests.

Citing cases from some of these jurisdictions, Magee highlighted situations in which license plate readers have assisted police with Amber alerts for missing persons, hit and run investigations, property theft and other crimes. Just having the technology available can help prevent crime too, Magee said.

“We don’t want them victimizing other people. We want them out of town, and so if we can arrest them, great, that’s the goal. But again, if we can just move along and prevent other crimes, that’s a win still,” he said.

But the technology has concerned some community members, who expressed apprehension at the meeting about handing over powerful surveillance tools to the police, as well as the possibility of images being manipulated for bad-faith purposes.

Mountain View resident Tim MacKenzie said the presentation’s success stories highlighted the advantages of the surveillance system without elaborating on the possible downsides. “It’s a very emotionally charged story designed to sort of prime us to say, ‘Yes, we should do this.’ I’m sure if I put my mind to it, I could think of or find some really emotionally charged stories that highlight the dangers of building up this surveillance system,” he said.

Looking to reassure the community, Canfield and Magee said the collected data would not be used for things like immigration enforcement, out-of-state abortion investigations or traffic enforcement, and would not be tied to personal identifiable information.

Mountain View also plans to set up a “transparency” portal to convey information to the public about how the cameras are being deployed. Regular audits will be conducted as well, with data inquiries stored for at least a year, according to the report.

While commending many of these safeguards, Aiyar pushed the city to consider more precautions, particularly when it came to other jurisdictions requesting access to data. It should be granted only for specific queries and not granted in perpetuity, as currently was the practice with other cities, she said.

Other board members expressed a more sanguine perspective to the data collection and dissemination. “I feel like as long as we can be responsible about how we’re using this data, and not really sharing it with people who shouldn’t have it (and) we’re putting the appropriate safeguards on it, then it’s a tool that we should use for those extreme circumstances. It makes sense,” said advisory board member Cleave Frink.

The anticipated cost to implement the Flock cameras is $96,800 for the first year and $80,000 annually thereafter, according to the report. The City Council is expected to vote on the recommendation to implement the license plate camera pilot program at its May 28 meeting.