Automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) have been in use for decades, and have been instrumental to solving crimes like abductions, homicides, shootings, hit-and-runs, stolen vehicles, and missing persons cases. Recently, however, their rapid expansion, growing public anxiety about technology and government surveillance, and cases of police misuse have made ALPRs a national controversy. Much of the debate has been cast as binary arguments for banning the technology or proceeding as if nothing should change; between safety and privacy. To a great extent this is a false dichotomy; me time as a chief of police, my training in ethics, and my experience in policy design and implementation have led me to believe concerns about ALPRs can be addressed through effective policy, meaningful oversight, and consistent accountability.
This report intends to give communities the means to achieve their public safety goals with the help of ALPRs while respecting privacy and liberty. It details how ALPRs function in policing, the value they provide, the important concerns their use raises, and how they can be regulated based on both well-established democratic ideals and longstanding principles of information privacy and security. It lays out the guardrails police departments, city councils, and legislators can apply, presents the essential elements of an ALPR policy, and provides a workbook with the key decisions jurisdictions need to make to ensure their ALPR use aligns with local values.
Regulating ALPRs in a way that respects rights and democracy while improving public safety is critical, because it is a harbinger of our ability to regulate, integrate, and adapt a wide range of new data technologies that are spreading through US communities as we speak. A new National Policing Institute survey suggests a majority of Americans feel this way: it found 58% would support ALPRs more if departments adopted safeguards, and 53% said data unconnected to a crime shouldn't be kept past 30 days.
ALPRs can continue to play an important role in the nation's public safety, but to do so they need to be effectively governed, which, at present, is a gap that the nation's police and elected officials have a duty to fill.
Dr. del Pozo received funding from Flock Safety to write this white paper. Flock had no role in the writing of the report, and its contents do not necessarily represent the positions and opinions of the funder. Written assurances of the author's editorial independence, and independent peer review of the paper prior to release (available below) were conditions of the project.
Peer Review 1
Wylie Stecklow, Esq. is a distinguished New York City civil rights litigator, educator, and veteran bar leader with over thirty years of experience managing complex institutional reform and constitutional advocacy.
As the founder and managing principal attorney of Wylie Stecklow PLLC, his practice focuses heavily on federal civil rights, police misconduct, Monell failure-to-train claims, Section 1983 litigation, photographer rights, and First Amendment litigation. Over the past two decades, he has been at the forefront of litigating constitutional policies and practices in policing and institutional accountability across multiple states, trying numerous high-stakes cases to verdict in state and federal courts.
Mr. Stecklow has served as counsel on some of the most significant civil rights matters in recent history, frequently co-counseling high-impact litigation alongside premier trial and civil rights firms, including Liakas Law P.C., Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, Law Offices of Joel B. Rudin, and Cohen & Green P.C. He was co-counsel in Sow v. City of NY, the record $13.7M civil rights class action settlement covering nearly 1,400 individuals arrested during the Summer 2020 George Floyd protests. He also serves as co-counsel alongside the New York State Attorney General’s Office and the NYCLU in the consolidated federal litigation In Re Summer 2020 NYPD Floyd Protest Policing, which successfully established landmark agreements to structurally reform NYPD policies regarding public protest and press rights.
Previously, in 2011, his firm was retained by the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly, where he organized pro bono representation for over 200 individuals and litigated dozens of constitutional suits. Continuing his extensive institutional reform docket, his firm has driven landmark impact litigation—including class action matters addressing constitutional violations on Rikers Island, such as cases concerning inmates denied required outdoor recreation, representation stemming from facility fires resulting in historical per-person settlement recoveries, and critical scholarship and peer review critique examining the Fourth Amendment implications and governance of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) and Flock surveillance systems.
A foundational voice in continuing legal education, Mr. Stecklow is the creator and director of the Civil Rights Étouffée, a prestigious national CLE platform founded in 2017 in New Orleans that brings together federal circuit and district judges,s tate Attorneys General, and leading public interest advocates. Since 2019, he has also served as an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University School of Law—his alma mater—where he shapes the next generation of advocates by instructing international practitioners in the Fundamentals of Lawyering program.
His commitment to public service and the organized bar is expansive. He serves as long-time outside counsel to the National Action Network (NAN) and is a founding committee member of the monthly NAN Legal Rights Nights in Harlem. He currently serves on the Executive Council of the Network of Bar Leaders (NoBL) as its Second Vice President and is an appointed member of the Second Circuit Committee on Civics Education (2024–present). He is also a past President of the Federal Bar Association’s SDNY Chapter and a former Chair of the FBA National Civil Rights Law Section. In recognition of his advocacy, Mr. Stecklow has been continuously named a Civil Rights Super Lawyer. He is the recipient of the FBA's national Sarah T. Hughes Civil Rights Award (2021), the National Press Photographers Association’s First Amendment Award (2023), and the National Action Network’s Michael A. Hardy Justice Award (2024). In 2025, he was inducted as an elected Fellow of the New York Bar Foundation. He has also received citations for outstanding citizenship and community service from the U.S. Congress, the New York State Assembly, the New York City Council, and the Manhattan Borough President's Office. He holds a J.D. from Fordham Law School (1990) and a B.S., cum laude, from Syracuse University.
Peer Review 2
Seth Stoughton, JD, is Mitchell Willoughby Professor of Advocacy and Public Justice, and Professor (Affiliate) of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the Joseph F. Rice School of Law, at the University of South Carolina. His critique can be found in the comments attached to an earlier version of the document, downloadable below.
Mr. Stoughton's scholarship on policing has appeared in the Emory Law Journal, Minnesota Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, and other top journals. He is the principal co-author of Evaluating Police Uses of Force (NYU Press 2020), and has written book chapters about police misconduct and the use of force. He is a frequent lecturer on policing issues; has regularly appeared on national and international media; has written about policing for The New York Times, The Atlantic, TIME, and other news publications; and has filed multiple amicus briefs to the Supreme Court. Seth has served as an expert in a number of high profile police cases, including testifying in the criminal prosecutions of Derek Chauvin, who was convicted for killing George Floyd, and Kim Potter, who was convicted for killing Daunte Wright, and providing expert analysis related to the police killing of Christian Glass and actions taken by the Seattle Police Department during the 2020 protests. He has testified for and against officers in both criminal and civil cases and provided independent investigation and review.
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