ALACHUA COUNTY, Fla. – The Alachua County Sheriff’s Office has identified 27 automated license plate readers that will have to be taken down from state highway rights-of-way within 30 days, following a directive issued Monday by the Florida Department of Transportation, Sheriff Chad Scott said.
Scott stopped short of ordering a countywide shutdown of automated license plate readers, often known as ALPRs, emphasizing that the technology remains an important tool in investigations involving “solving homicides, violent attacks, armed robberies, burglaries, missing-person cases, and other serious crimes”.
“The Alachua County Sheriff’s Office will comply with FDOT’s directive regarding the placement of ALPRs within state highway rights-of-way,” Scott wrote in a Facebook post. “At the same time, we will continue working to understand what options remain available to us so that we can maintain effective investigative capabilities.” He added that automated license plate reader technology has assisted investigators by generating leads, identifying vehicles tied to criminal activity and helping locate wanted individuals.
The response from the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office differs from steps taken by several other law enforcement agencies across Florida.
Sheriff’s offices in Jacksonville, Putnam County and Clay County have each announced full suspensions and removals of their ALPR systems, actions that go beyond the Florida Department of Transportation’s directive.
Privacy and public safety
Automated license-plate readers use cameras to capture license-plate numbers, vehicle images, and the time and location of each sighting. The information can be stored in searchable databases and shared among law-enforcement agencies. The cameras typically record every readable plate within their view, not only plates associated with suspected crimes, allowing users to search previous sightings or receive alerts when a plate on a watch list is detected.
Sheriff Scott emphasized both the technology’s value in investigations of serious crimes and its potential to collect information about people who are not suspected of crimes.
“As law-abiding citizens, we should never lose sight of the fact that people simply want to go about their daily lives without feeling as though their movements are being unnecessarily monitored or that information about them is being retained or accessed for purposes unrelated to legitimate public safety. At the same time, we cannot ignore the tremendous public-safety value this technology can provide when it is used appropriately, responsibly, and within clearly defined legal and policy boundaries,” Scott wrote.
“The vast majority of vehicles captured by ALPR technology belong to ordinary people who are simply going to work, taking their children to school, visiting family, going to the grocery store, or otherwise living their lives,” Scott wrote. “Those people are not suspects, and they should not be treated as such.”
RELATED: Mike Lawler Faces Fresh Democratic Push for NY House Seat
The FDOT memorandum cites the “exponential increase” in police deployments, reports of misuse, data-privacy concerns, and “surveillance schemes” as reasons for immediate action to preserve “Floridians’ sovereignty and quality of life.”
The memorandum was signed by Will Watts, FDOT’s chief operating officer and assistant secretary. The directive applies only to the state highway system rights-of-way and does not require the removal of cameras located solely on city- or county-controlled roads.
The directive follows Gov. Ron DeSantis’ announcement Friday that state agencies were removing license-plate readers: “Our agencies that had a few of them are bringing them down. We’re going to clear the state rights-of-ways,” DeSantis told Eric Bolling.
Two days earlier, DeSantis called the spread of license-plate readers “out of control” and said he did not want Florida to become a “surveillance state.” He said most systems are operated by police departments and sheriff’s offices and that broader restrictions would require legislative action.
Local response
Before FDOT released the memorandum, Gainesville Police Department (GPD) told Alachua Chronicle that none of its cameras are located on state rights-of-way. GPD said it did not have a response specific to DeSantis’ comments: “We will continue to monitor state and local laws that may influence their use,” a spokesman said. Today we asked City officials to confirm, after reviewing the memorandum, whether any GPD cameras would be affected, but we did not receive an immediate response.
During an Aug. 6 Gainesville City Commission meeting, Police Chief Nelson Moya said GPD has Flock cameras at 10 locations and cameras from another vendor at about five additional locations. Moya said he knew of no local misuse and called successful results from the cameras “irreplaceable.”
Moya said officers must enter an active case number before looking up information and that an administrator audits use of the system. “There is no free-for-all, where we can sit there and look up a tag to see if a Commissioner is going by this intersection at what time,” he said, according to Alachua Chronicle’s report on the meeting.
For now, the FDOT memorandum has resulted in the identification of 27 ALPRs that must be removed within 30 days.