{"id":232670,"date":"2026-04-08T17:50:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T21:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/08\/police-say-license-plate-cameras-help-them-solve-crimes-but-residents-and-lawmakers-raise-concerns-over-privacy\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T18:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T22:40:12","slug":"police-say-license-plate-cameras-help-them-solve-crimes-but-residents-and-lawmakers-raise-concerns-over-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/08\/police-say-license-plate-cameras-help-them-solve-crimes-but-residents-and-lawmakers-raise-concerns-over-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Police say license plate cameras help them solve crimes, but residents and lawmakers raise concerns over privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Police say license plate cameras help them solve crimes, but residents and lawmakers raise concerns over privacy<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.michiganpublic.org\/criminal-justice-legal-system\/2026-04-08\/police-say-license-plate-cameras-help-them-solve-crimes-but-residents-and-lawmakers-raise-concerns-over-privacy-data-sharing<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-04-08 17:50:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.michiganpublic.org<\/a><\/p>\n

As automated license plate readers (ALPRs) continue to get approved for use throughout Michigan, concerns from residents and lawmakers about privacy and data sharing persist.<\/p>\n

More than 125 cities and counties across the state are using cameras that act as automated license plate readers. They\u2019re primarily operated under Flock Safety, and are popular among local police departments for solving crimes.<\/p>\n

Paris Lewbel is a spokesperson for Flock Safety. He said the cameras take pictures of the back of vehicles to help solve cases involving stolen vehicles, burglaries, assaults, and missing people.<\/p>\n

Lewbel said that Flock technology does not track vehicles or individuals, but takes a point-in-time image of license plates.<\/p>\n

During a January 26 city council meeting, Waterford Township approved an agreement with Flock\u2014despite concerns from residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hard reality is that yes, the tools that Flock provides are useful for catching criminals and without them it will indeed make your jobs more difficult,\u201d resident Drew Marchewski said. \u201cHowever, there can be no shortcut to justice when that path tramples over our rights and civil liberties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marchewski voiced concern about Flock operating unregulated.<\/p>\n

Resident Haley Smith emphasized the importance of personal privacy. <\/p>\n

\u201cSurely a few traffic violations isn’t worth risking innocent lives in chaos when we could hire more police and solve the problem instead of feeding corporate greed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Police Chief Scott Underwood said during the meeting that much of the discussion is misinformed. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing that LPRs collect is images, images of vehicles and license plates that are purged after 30 days,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no registration information or personal information connected to those images.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewbel, the Flock spokesperson, said no outside agency can access data collected from another agency\u2019s cameras unless that agency explicitly chooses to share it. \u201cFlock…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police say license plate cameras help them solve crimes, but residents and lawmakers raise concerns…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":232671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/npr.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/877fe69\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/6016x3158+0+0\/resize\/1200x630!\/quality\/90\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F66%2F8e%2F44c025174ed6866c95a7f21be3ee%2Ftrafficcameraadobestock-274543441.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232672,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232670\/revisions\/232672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}