Cotati City Council
Agenda Staff Report
Item type: REGULAR AGENDA (ACTION)
To: City Council
Subject: Dash Camera Agreement for Police Electric Vehicles Date: May 09, 2023
Written by: Michael Parish, Chief of Police
Recommendation
It is recommended that the City Council adopt a motion authorizing the City Manager to execute a 5 year agreement with Axon for deployment of dash cameras in the police electric vehicles.
Background
On March 14, 2023, the City Council initially discussed the purchase of Axon Fleet 3 dash cameras for the newer electric patrol vehicles. The primary purpose of these cameras is to record events occurring immediately prior to stops and during transports, which often are not clearly visible by body cameras until the officer exits the patrol vehicle.
Currently, through the Countywide Auto Theft Task Force, the City (and all Sonoma County law enforcement agencies) have a subscription to the Vigilant law enforcement database, which holds ALPR information from California law enforcement agencies. Also through a grant, the City has existing license plate readers on several non-electric patrol vehicles.
At the March 14 City Council meeting, it was noted that the proposed dash cameras also have Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) functionality, which led to a policy discussion about ALPRs that the staff and City Council were not prepared to have. Ultimately, given the limited information available at that time, City Council directed staff to remove the ALPR feature from the dash cameras.
Due to the incomplete discussion at the March 14 City Council meeting, staff elected to pause the order and bring the item back to the City Council to have a fuller discussion of the pros and cons of ALPRs before placing the order.
Analysis/Discussion
How do Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) Systems work? Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems function to automatically capture an image of a vehicle and the vehicle’s license plate, transform the plate image into alphanumeric characters using optical character recognition, compare the plate number acquired to a “hot list” of vehicles of interest to law enforcement (provided by the US Department of Justice, National Crime Information Center [NCIC]), and then alert law enforcement officers when a vehicle of interest has been observed. The hot list is generated by police officers entering vehicle plates associated with crimes, which is then distributed by NCIC.
The stored license plate data also provides law enforcement investigators with a pointer system that may help them identify vehicles associated with suspects, witnesses, or victims, and to develop exculpatory information that assists them with focusing their investigative resources.
The data also allows law enforcement to connect serial criminal activities that may have occurred in disconnected law enforcement jurisdictions.
The ALPR system and database does not include any personally identifying information, such as vehicle registration information, driver’s license information, etc. The image below includes all of the information collected and available in the ALPR system. The “owner”, identified in the sample image below, is the owner of the ALPR device (i.e. of the police officer operating the device). When the ALPR flags a license plate, it is the responsibility of the police officer to confirm that it is still a wanted vehicle and to pull registration information from separate (nonALPR) systems.
How is ALPR data used by our Police Department?
In addition to “hot list” notifications in real time, law enforcement personnel can search the ALPR data when required and based upon the need to:
1. Locate stolen, wanted, and subject of investigation vehicles.
2. Locate and apprehend individuals subject to arrest warrants or otherwise lawfully sought by law enforcement.
3. Locate witnesses and victims of violent crime.
4. Locate missing children and elderly individuals, including responding to Amber and Silver Alerts.
5. Support local, state, federal, and tribal public safety departments in the identification of vehicles associated with targets of criminal investigations, including investigations of serial crimes.
6. Protect participants at special events.
7. Protect critical infrastructure sites.
Another common use of ALPR technology is to canvas license plates around any crime scene to assist in the identification of suspects, victims, and witnesses. ALPR technology only acts as a pointer system that allows law enforcement to conduct searches with limited information, including partial license plate information.
What laws are there regarding the use of ALPR devices?
After California Senate Bill 34 became law in 2016, it required transparency of ALPR implementation, policies, security, and notifications of any data breach. The law also requires law enforcement agency ALPR system operators to have and post ALPR usage and privacy policies to ensure that the collection, use, maintenance, sharing, and dissemination of the information is consistent with respect for individuals’ privacy and civil liberties.
How does the Axon Dash Camera Work with ALPR?
The Axon Fleet 3 dash camera integrates into a secure web data warehouse called “Evidence.com” that is fully compliant with the data security standards set by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS). Evidence.com is a cloud solution used by the police department to automatically upload body camera video in a tamper proof repository and assemble case information for prosecution by the District Attorney. Every 6 hours, the NCIC “hot list” is updated in the ALPR system, which also has the ability to be supplemented with a local “hot list”. As indicated in the screen shot below, plate read retention periods can be set for many available time periods between 0 and 5 years. A complete Frequently Asked Questions about the Axon system can be found here.
The ALPR system administrator assigns roles and permissions to other police personnel.
Searches of ALPR data are limited to the Chief, Lieutenant, and the detective, provided they have a lawful need. All officers have the ability to add a vehicle to the “hot list”, based on the lawful purpose described previously.
ALPR data collected by Cotati is not searchable or available by any other law enforcement agency. If there is a lawful need, such as an investigation by another law enforcement agency, they would need to make a request and an authorized user in Cotati would run the search and provide the requesting agency with the information.
For transparency, the Axon system has a public facing web page that contains information on retention policy, number of reads in the database, and “hot list” categories. A sample image of the public facing page is provided below:
Is ALPR data shared for the purpose of immigration enforcement? California is a “Sanctuary State”, so no authorized law enforcement user or agency may access California ALPR databases or provide ALPR data for the purpose of immigration enforcement.
Does the ALPR system collect personal identifying information? The ALPR system does not contain personal identifying information associated with data collected through ALPR devices. The system only contains the data sets of license plate numbers, photos of the vehicles, and geospatial locations from where the images were captured. There is no connectivity in the ALPR system to the vehicle’s registration information or the driver's license information of the owner.
How is the system audited?
The system logs each user’s activity by agency, name, date, time, and purpose of search.
Designated law enforcement personnel may perform sample audits to the system to confirm that it is functioning properly, required data is being appropriately submitted and plate searches are lawful.
Is vehicle information shared with private sector companies? No, the law enforcement ALPR systems are restricted to law enforcement personnel with a lawful purpose for using the system.
Who has access to the ALPR database? Only
law enforcement personnel that have:
1. An official and legitimate law enforcement purpose for accessing the system.
2. A criminal case or incident number/name.
3. A lawful purpose with a need to know and right to know the information.
In the case of the Axon system, only authorized Cotati Police Department staff can access run searches in the database.
How long are ALPR records maintained?
Most ALPR records are maintained for a set period within California that ranges by jurisdiction from sixty (60) days to five (5) years with records purged unless the data has become, or it is reasonable to believe that it will become, evidence in a criminal or civil action or is subject to a lawful action to produce records. Most California police agencies retain ALPR reads between 6 months to 2 years, although some retain these records for 5 or more years. The Lexipol standard (and the current City retention) is 1 year, as defined by Government Code § 34090.6 for a, “…video or electronic imaging system designed to record the regular and ongoing operations of the departments……, including mobile in-car video systems.” In practice, most searches for investigations are run on the prior 6-months of reads.
The retention of records allow time for witnesses and victims of crime to report incidents to law enforcement. It also allows law enforcement to connect serial criminal activities that occur in disconnected law enforcement jurisdictions. The greatest potential value of an ALPR system is in identifying vehicles associated with the investigation of violent and serial criminal events. In this capacity the ALPR system aids law enforcement investigators by providing a pointer system that may help them identify vehicles associated with suspects, witnesses, victims and to develop exculpatory information that assists them with focusing their investigative resources.
Financial Considerations
The proposed 5-year agreement is $12,219 per year, for a total cost of $63,566 from the General Fund. Once ordered, there is an 8-month lead time to receive the equipment. Therefore, if approved by the City Council, this expense will be included in the forthcoming FY 23-24 budget.
If the City Council elects to remove the ALPR feature from the package, the total cost over 5 years is $55,498. If ordered with ALPR removed, it cannot be added back into the package and must be ordered separately at a cost of $15,338 over 5 years. If ordered separately, it would cost $7,270 more than the bundled price.
Environmental Issues
This action is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because it is not a project which has a potential for resulting in either a direct physical change in the environment, or a reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment, pursuant to CEQA Guideline section 15378.
Attachments:
Axon Fleet Quote (PDF)