Automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology allows for the automated detection of license plates. It’s used by the St. Louis Park Police Department to gather license plate numbers for official law enforcement purposes, such as identifying stolen or wanted vehicles, stolen license plates, and missing persons. It may also be used to gather information related to active warrants, electronic surveillance, suspect interdiction and stolen property recovery. Learn more about the St. Louis Park Police Department use of ALPRs at the police department's transparency portal.

How ALPRs work

ALPRs are installed in public locations to collect the rear license plate of a vehicle. When a vehicle passes, the ALPR takes a picture of the rear of the vehicle, logging the location of the camera, the date, and the time of the photo. The photo is uploaded to Amazon Web Services (AWS) GovCloud*, a compliant cloud solution for hosting sensitive and controlled data.

The photo is analyzed by the ALPR provider's software to determine the license plate in the photo and vehicle characteristics, including color and vehicle style (SUV, passenger car, etc.). The plate is then compared to a “hotlist” provided by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). The hotlist is sorted and has titles such as “Stolen Vehicle,” “Wanted Person” or other titles with lists of license plates. No other information is provided. If a plate matches one on the hotlist, it sends an alert to officers working with the plate and hotlist title. An officer who receives the alert then uses a department computer to run the plate for more information to determine if the alert requires a response and if the plate is correct. No other information is provided to the ALPR provider.

*AWS GovCloud is a specialized cloud computing environment designed to host government systems and sensitive government data while meeting strict security, regulatory and compliance requirements. Unlike a standard commercial cloud, a GovCloud environment provides additional controls for data protection, access management, auditing and regulatory compliance. Common systems housed on AWS GovCloud (or a similar product) include criminal justice information, case management, court records management and many health records systems.

How your privacy is protected

The St. Louis Park Police Department understands and respects the concerns raised about ALPRs and privacy audits committed to ensuring ALPR data is used only for legitimate law enforcement purposes. The following safeguards are in place:

• Each search on the system requires officers to state a legitimate law enforcement purpose and to list a case number or call for service number.
• Each search is logged and audited quarterly.
• The entire system is audited biannually by a third party to ensure compliance with state law.
• The St. Louis Park Police Department and the City of St. Louis Park don’t allow ALPR data to be used for immigration enforcement purposes.
• ALPR data collected by the St. Louis Park Police Department isn’t shared with any federal agencies or local agencies with Immigration Enforcement Agreements with ICE (287g agreements).

While ALPRs record every license plate that drives by and compares them to the hotlist, the system has no identifying information on the vehicle owner or driver. ALPRs don’t have facial recognition; they take photos of the rear of the vehicle to prevent photographs of the driver.

The photos and logs of plates are deleted after 30 days. The image of the vehicle is only maintained if it is evidence in a case for prosecution, and that photo and data are placed in the case file separate from the ALPR system.

Sharing data with other agencies

St. Louis Park owns all data collected by its ALPRs. The ALPR vendor doesn’t have the right to share St. Louis Park data. All requests for sharing are with the St. Louis Park Police Department.

Each agency the St. Louis Park Police Department shares with signs an agreement indicating they will only search data for law enforcement purposes and they will follow Minnesota state law regarding ALPR data. The St. Louis Park Police Department doesn’t enter into agreements with agencies outside of Minnesota, federal agencies, or any Minnesota agency with immigration enforcement agreements with ICE.

Some agencies have been unable or unwilling to sign a formal agreement protecting our city data. Those agencies DON’T have access to St. Louis Park data.

By default, external agencies can’t access or view St. Louis Park’s data. The St. Louis Park Police Department ALPR system administrators must explicitly set permissions to allow agencies with signed data usage agreements to access St. Louis Park data

To prevent St. Louis Park data from being used to enforce immigration enforcement-related activities, the St. Louis Park Police Department doesn’t share data with any agency that has signed a 287(g) or similar cooperation agreement with DHS, ICE or any DHS sub entities. This is because a 287(g) agreement may be interpreted as a lawful purpose in Minnesota to search for Immigration. Without this agreement with ICE, Minnesota police officers do not have authority to enforce immigration law.  St. Louis Park also uses a setting in the ALPR system to exclude searches for immigration. If a purpose code of Immigration is selected, the party searching will not receive any results from St. Louis Park.

User access monitoring

• All license plate searches by officers are permanently stored in an audit log identifying the agency and purpose for searching.
• The St. Louis Park Police Department internally audits searches quarterly internally to ensure policy compliance.
• After system settings changes are made in the system by an administrator, the system is checked daily to ensure system changes did not have any unintended consequences.
• The entire system is audited biannually by a third party to ensure compliance with state law. Review the police department’s most recent ALPR biannual audit summary by a third party.
• All images gathered by the ALPR are for the official use of the police department and aren’t open to public review. As prescribed by the Minnesota State Law (MN 13.824) all data subject to public review is located here.
• Unless needed for ongoing investigative purposes, all data collected is stored for only 30 days before being deleted. View the automated license plate reader policy.

Protecting your civil rights

Ongoing and repeated searching of suspect vehicles requires signed warrants. Tracking a vehicle in the system to gain information on the occupant requires a warrant as that occupant has an expectation of privacy in the vehicle. Stolen vehicles are an exception. If the vehicle is stolen, the occupant has no expectation of privacy. The intent in locating the vehicle is to hold the suspect accountable and return the vehicle to the owner, so it does not require a warrant.

Vendor information

Find more information below from the vendor currently providing ALPR services to the St. Louis Park Police Department.

• Myths vs. facts
• Privacy and trust
• Data security
• Compliance tools
• Customer control and ownership of data

ALPR data

The files below are generated by the St. Louis Park Police Department and provided online for the review of residents and others. These files will be updated monthly or quarterly as indicated, or as new information is available.