The Outstater
A Defense of ALPR Cameras
THERE’S A BIG DIFFERENCE between the automated corner camera and the venerable corner policeman, an institution long recognized for accelerating investigations, raising crime clearance rates, locating missing people, reducing auto theft and generally keeping our streets safe for the law-abiding.
The difference? We can no longer afford the policeman.
But the much-hated cameras, known as Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) cameras, are embarrassingly efficient. Nor are they subject to the will of public-sector unions or high-minded defund-the-police initiatives. Plus they are racist, or at least it is feared they will produce disproportionate arrests of blacks. Worst of all, the cameras are unabashed snitches willing to testify to any and all crime, a willingness lacking in certain neighborhoods.
In short, they are not politically correct.
Thus our city council this week, under pressure from the mayor, voted unanimously to pull our precious few cameras off the streets. In doing so, it negated a technology that would have lowered crime in our central city, thereby encouraging investment there and bringing in new jobs while at the same time protecting the supposed privacy rights of thugs accustomed to committing crimes on the street or using vehicles to flee those and more discreet crimes.
Whew! That’s quite an achievement in a single vote. And the local media, boosterish by instinct, dutifully glossed over the documented cost of crime to applaud the imagined advance in civil rights. My assistant Grok, though, has second thoughts:
- It is estimated that the cameras contribute to roughly 20–25 percent of solved/reported crimes in deploying jurisdictions. This includes homicides, shootings, robberies, kidnappings and high-volume ones like vehicle theft.
- That is in addition to real-time alerts (stolen vehicles, wanted persons, missing people) that enable rapid interceptions. These include locating missing persons, recovering stolen cars, tracking suspects in multi-jurisdictional crimes and aiding in high-profile cases (e.g., Brown University shooting suspect). There are frequent reports that credit the cameras with solving murders, kidnappings, sex offenses and shootings that might otherwise go cold.
- Analysis of ALPRs across 216 agencies found a roughly 11 percent drop in motor vehicle thefts in the year after deployment with vehicle-theft clearance/arrest rates rising about 16 percent.
- And again, the cameras would multiply limited officer resources and raise the certainty of apprehension, which is the strongest deterrent factor in police work.
- Finally, the supposed abuses seem to have more to do with an inept judicial system, a topic somehow left off the table, than the cameras themselves.
I am told that there will be a compromise to bring back the cameras with “guardrails,” to wit a guarantee that blacks are not pictured disproportionately, an artificial algorithm that puts a higher value on ALPR pictures of whites because they commit fewer crimes.
We are being ruled by idiots. — tcl
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