Henrico's 87 license plate readers triggered 30,000 alerts in just six months (2024)

Over the past two years, Henrico County has been expanding its system of cameras that search for cars by license plates and characteristics.

Those charged with finding and convicting criminals say the cameras have been a helpful tool for catching criminals. Some legal and legislative experts are concerned about the technology’s potential and that it can infringe on rights against unlawful searches and seizures.

Henrico County currently uses about 87 automatic license plate readers from the company Flock Safety. The motion-activated cameras are mounted to locations across the county and continuously search for vehicles tied to crime. They can also search for vehicle characteristics such as color, make, model or body type.

Cameras search for plates and car characteristics that are tied to certain search parameters, such as a missing person, stolen vehicles or a car involved in a robbery. Police are notified with a “hit” when a matching car is found by one of the county’s cameras.

Through the first six months of 2024, Henrico received more than 30,000 alerts from license plate readers, about 170 per day.

Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor said the cameras have been an effective and versatile tool in apprehending suspects.

“Not only has it been helpful in not only, for example, a decrease in auto larcenies, but the idea that we’ve been able to solve violent crimes,” Taylor said. “Even when we’re talking about stolen automobiles, missing persons, it can be utilized in so many different ways.”

Henrico first purchased 50 of these automatic license plate readers in 2022 with an option to renew and buy more cameras at $2,500 per camera per year, plus potential add-ons. Taylor said that number is now 87 operational cameras in the county.

A police spokesperson said the technology has been “extremely useful” in a variety of investigations so far. Neither the chief of police nor police officials were made available to speak on the topic.

Other Virginia departments have also been using plate readers. Seven Hampton Roads law enforcement agencies have installed more than 450 of them as of May. Richmond and Chesterfield County are also using plate readers.

A Hanover County police spokesperson said the county has access to the Flock database and that there are two automatic license plate readers mounted to police cruisers but did not confirm if the county has fixed cameras on roads.

Caution over plate readers

Not everyone has a favorable view of plate readers. Some say their use can focus too harshly on minority communities that are already heavily policed. Others have branded these cameras as “mass surveillance” devices that infringe on people’s expectations of privacy.

Chris Kaiser, policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, says plate readers largely lack any coherent regulation for how they can be used.

“There’s nothing inherently wrong with the technology,” Kaiser said. “The problem so far has been the cavalier way that devices have been adopted and rolled out into communities without appropriate rules and safeguards on how they need to be used.

“That jeopardizes not only civil liberties but also potentially the integrity of criminal cases that we want to see adjudicated.”

In May, a Norfolk judge suppressed evidence from a case that was gathered using Flock plate readers. Judge Jamilah LeCruise wrote that the “prolonged tracking of public movements with surveillance” invades a citizen’s expectation of privacy, therefore should require a warrant.

Officers in that case made an arrest based on Flock evidence without getting a warrant.

Meanwhile, the same issue was raised with two other circuit court judges in Norfolk and Chesterfield. Judges in those cases said plate readers were not a privacy violation and did not require a warrant for police to investigate.

Taylor said she expects there to be legal challenges based on plate reader usage in Henrico, but she is confident the county is covered and is not violating any privacy laws.

Henrico’s policy for using plate readers says a “hit” in the Flock system alone is not enough to initiate a stop or make an arrest. Officers are required to “confirm a positive ‘hit’ prior to any enforcement action being taken.”

Advocates have also said the use of these cameras has the potential to target higher crime communities, which are typically poorer, minority communities, rather than wealthier and white communities.

Taylor said Henrico County police Chief Eric English has been very purposeful in placing Henrico’s plate readers so they do not target high-crime neighborhoods specifically.

Virginia studying plate reader use

Virginia lawmakers have been trying to put legal safeguards in place around plate readers in each of the past three years.

Those bills wanted to limit the use of plate readers to scanning, detecting and identifying license plate numbers involved with specific crimes. Those crimes included stolen vehicles, missing or endangered people, human trafficking, vehicles involved in killing of police animals, suspected acts of terrorism and violent felonies.

Another provision would see regulations around how plate-reader data is stored.

State Sen. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg, who has been an advocate on many criminal justice bills, says one of the more important questions being considered in legislation is how long law enforcement can have access to people’s movements through cameras.

“What is the right timeline, is it 48 hours, is it more?” Aird said. “How long a personal private movement is accessible by law enforcement, particularly when there is no cause for review because ... in other states you really could establish a pattern of someone’s movement even when they are law-abiding citizens.”

Plate readers not only capture pictures of the car but also the entire scene around it. That could include nearby cars or people walking on the street. While that information is not currently being used, Aird says there’s nothing stopping companies from using it in the future.

Flock systems hold data for up to 30 days before it is wiped, according to the company.

“Members want to ensure privacy protections for innocent bystanders whose data is being captured by this technology,” Aird said. “What we don’t want is to create a surveillance state in the commonwealth of Virginia.”

Flock’s CEO Garrett Langley said in a March 2022 interview with the Georgia Tech Business Network that he thought Flock cameras had the potential to reduce the number of traffic stops. He said instead of broadly searching for “any” white sedan, the technology could show police “the” white sedan involved in a crime.

“Today, a patrol officer is going to drive around without Flock and just look for something suspicious and go act on it,” Langley said in the interview. “That’s incredibly subjective. But that’s all they have available today.”

Answering questions about the ethics of the technology, he said questions around privacy were “unnecessary” because companies such as Google and Meta are already harvesting so much data about individuals.

“We actually don’t know who is in the car, nor do we care,” Langley said. “All we care about is that this car is stolen.”

At the time, Langley said Flock was operating in 1,400 cities.

The Virginia Crime Commission is currently studying plate readers and will report back its findings during the 2025 General Assembly session. That could lead to the adoption of a blanket set of rules for all localities in Virginia.

Taylor said she sees Henrico’s policies as a potential leader in the state.

“Technology can balance the public interest but also help us achieve public safety,” she said. “I am proud to support that in my opinion, Henrico is doing that right.”