LAPD Can Put Plate-Reading Cameras on Valley Streetlights After Council Veto Falls One Vote Short
A 9-6 vote to block the three-month Axon pilot in Encino, Woodland Hills and Tarzana needed 10 votes, leaving privacy limits for a fight over expanding it.
Cameras that read license plates are headed for the streetlights of the west San Fernando Valley. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council tried to block a three-month Los Angeles Police Department pilot program with Axon Enterprise and came up one vote short. That means the test can go ahead in Encino, Woodland Hills and Tarzana, even though most council members wanted stronger privacy rules first.
A Majority Said No, but Not a Big Enough One
The council voted 9-6 to veto the program. Under the city charter, the council can overturn a decision by a city commission only with a two-thirds vote, which on the 15-member council means 10 votes, LAist reported. The Board of Police Commissioners, the civilian panel appointed by the mayor that sets LAPD policy, had approved the pilot in September.
Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez started the veto effort. He wanted the department to commit to an independent audit of how it uses license plate data, to put the commission in charge of any sharing with outside agencies, and to limit who inside the LAPD can see the data. "We should take time to make sure that we have thorough, thoughtful protections laid out before we install more cameras," he said Tuesday, according to LAist.
Councilmembers Bob Blumenfield, John Lee, Adrin Nazarian, Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez, along with Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, voted against the veto, NBC Los Angeles reported.
How the Pilot Will Work
Axon will put the cameras on some city streetlights for three months at no cost to the city. The pilot starts in Council District 3, which Blumenfield represents and is leaving. Ubicquia Inc., the subcontractor installing the equipment, says the cameras will clamp onto the tops of the lights and draw power from them, according to NBC Los Angeles. Until now, the LAPD has mostly used plate readers mounted on its patrol cars rather than fixed cameras on city streets, LAist noted.
The department's updated plate-reader policy will start at the same time as the pilot. NBC Los Angeles reported that the policy bans unauthorized secondary use and sharing of the data and keeps the data owned by the city. It limits access to 4,000 officers. It also cuts the window for routine searches from two years to 90 days. Officers who use the system will need a supervisor's approval and must complete online video training and a test. The Police Commission said the agreement gives the LAPD full control over the images once plates are scanned.
Data can still be shared with a list of other agencies. That list includes police departments in Torrance, Huntington Park, Glendale, Alhambra and West Covina, and sheriff's departments in Los Angeles, Madera and San Luis Obispo counties.
Why Council Members Were Wary
The plan comes after months of close attention to how the LAPD handles plate data. This summer, the department chose not to renew its contract with Flock Safety, another plate-reader company. That followed reports that law enforcement agencies, including the LAPD, had shared Flock data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, LAist reported. In July, the Police Commission's inspector general released a long report on the technology. It recommended that new contracts go to the commission for approval, and that step is what gave the council its chance to weigh in.
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said the cameras could unsettle communities shaken by immigration raids. "Public safety should not come at the expense of the very people we're supposed to be protecting," she said, according to NBC Los Angeles. Councilmember Curren Price, who also voted for the veto, said people in his district are still unsure how the new technology will work.
Supporters said the cameras help solve crimes. "It helps investigators develop leads, identify patterns, pursue cases that might otherwise be difficult to solve," Lee said. Park said much of the anger over the technology comes from misinformation, LAist reported.
The Bigger Decision Is Still Ahead
Blumenfield said the council will have more say once the trial ends. "The point of leverage is going to come after the three months," he said. "That's when we're going to be faced with this question about 'Do we expand this?'"
The pilot is a small piece of the LAPD's business with Axon. The Police Commission also recently approved a 10-year, $235 million contract with the company for body cameras, Tasers and plate-reader cameras on about 1,600 police vehicles. That deal still needs council approval and is being reviewed by the city administrative officer, according to the mayor's office, as reported by LAist.
