Council OKs license plate reader agreement
Red light cameras may be a thing of the past in Texas, but new license plate readers will soon be going up in Taylor.
At the regular meeting Sept. 28, the Taylor City Council unanimously approved by a 4-0 margin a multiple use agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation to request a permit to install and operate automated license plate recognition readers on eight Texas Department of Transportation roadways in Taylor.
“It is strictly vehicle and license plate information,” said Taylor Police Department Chief Henry Fluck at the meeting. “It does not give information on people. There is no facial recognition (and) no traffic enforcement, meaning some people think this has something to do with red light cameras, which it doesn’t. Some people might think it has something to do with speed enforcement, but it doesn’t. This is not a traffic enforcement tool.”
Taylor Police Chief Henry Fluck speaks about automated license plate recognition readers Sept. 28 at the regular City Council meeting. Photo by Nicole Lessin
Fluck said the cameras, which will be owned and operated by Flock Safety, will have an initial cost to the city of about $25,000.
“The cost is $2,500 per year per camera and an installation cost of $750 per camera,” Fluck said.
Benefits of the program could include criminal apprehension of wanted felons, solving crimes, apprehending stolen vehicles, as well as locating endangered children through Amber Alerts and endangered seniors through Silver Alerts, Fluck said.
Fluck said that while traffic data will not be noted, license plate information as well as a vehicle’s make, model, color and other attributes can be used to allow the Taylor Police Department to match vehicles to certain real time alerts or pull a search on a vehicle for a specific criminal case.
“So, in other words, if we were looking for a suspect vehicle in a specific crime, we could see, yes, that vehicle drove out of Taylor at 2 a.m. on Sept. 29,” Fluck said. “That vehicle was in Taylor and then it left Taylor or a vehicle entered Taylor, committed a crime and then left Taylor, if we had that type of identifying information of the vehicle,” Fluck said.
But the data would be deleted after 30 days, and could not be accessed without justification, Fluck said.
“To run a search, there has to be a reason,” Fluck said. “There is an audit trail. And the way we would handle it in our department is the officers would have to put in a case number of the specific criminal case that is being investigated.”
Fluck said about 80 police departments in Texas use the Flock system including in Austin, Round Rock and several other cities in Williamson County.
“We even have independent school district police departments and homeowners’ associations throughout Central Texas,” Fluck said. “There are 20 of them that have it.”
Despite the unanimous approval, some members of the council expressed privacy concerns and had questions for Hector Soliman, Flock’s senior community affairs manager.
“Who all has access to this information?” District 2 Councilman Mitch Drummond asked.
“Your police department is able to share data with other police departments within the system, but just like your police department, it has to enter in a case number (and) an audit is attached to that,” Soliman said. Any searches from a police department also has to enter in a case number which is auditable.”
