AUSTIN (KXAN)– According to an email from APD sent out to city of Austin team, as numerous as 22 % of automated certificate plate reader (ALPR) data source searches did not have a case number connected to the query.
Ahead of Tuesday’s Austin Common council job session, where ALPRs would be talked about, city team asked APD via e-mail for more details concerning the technology. That e-mail was shown KXAN.
Many have been vital of the innovation, concerned that information can be shown law enforcement agencies that target females looking for abortions or undocumented immigrants. APD stated on Tuesday that the division does not mean to use ALPRs for those reasons.
“The Austin Police Division acknowledges the importance of openness in the usage of the ALPR system. With this in mind, the Austin Cops Division is working with the supplier to mandate that the user input a case number prior to [a] search in addition to a reason for the search that remains in line with the resolution,” APD wrote in the e-mail to city team.
APD said that when the ALPR pilot program went reside in March 2024, the resolution did not explicitly require policemans to give a factor for a data source search. However, it acknowledged that the department was only allowed to utilize the innovation to help with examinations.
APD told city staff that in the second quarter of 2024 and the initial quarter of 2025, around one in five searches did not have a situation number listed. In quarter 3 of 2024, only 11 % of searches did not have an identified situation number, and in quarter 4, 16 % did not have one.
Austin’s year-long pilot program started in March 2024, and on March 27, the Austin City board voted 8 – 3 to expand the program for another 3 months. The city board will decide on Thursday whether to prolong the program once again.
Throughout the work session, APD discussed to the Austin Common Council why it finds the innovation advantageous.
“This authorities division is 300 policemans short. Presently, we do not have enough policemans to [perform] the job that we would choose to do without the use of innovation to supplement [our] work,” claimed Assistant Austin Authorities Chief Sheldon Askew.
“We’re just far better [and] a lot more successful when we have technology such as ALPR,” he continued.
The pilot called for that the system just hold information captured by the cameras for 7 days, below 30 days. APD officers need to train before being able to access the system. Policemans have to undergo training annually.
APD stated on Tuesday that information gathered by the cameras belongs only to the division and that it is not shared with any other company.
“There are some firms throughout the country [that] will share that data with their partner firms or with firms across the nation. We do not do that,” Askew stated.