Mar-Mac Police Department part of growing network of agencies with license plate readers

By Audrey Posten | Times-Register

The Mar-Mac Police Department is one in a growing number of law enforcement agencies across the country who are using automated license plate readers (LPRs) to photograph vehicles. While Mar-Mac Police Chief Robert Millin stressed the technology is an investigative tool for his department, the surveillance has sparked fears of potential misuse in some communities around the U.S.

According to Millin, the Mar-Mac Police Department has two LPRs through Flock Safety, the predominant provider across the country. Flock claims to have cameras in over 5,000 communities connected to more than 4,800 law enforcement agencies in 49 states.

“The reason we chose Flock is because that’s predominant in the area. Prairie du Chien has it, Dubuque has it. Most every city along Highway 20 has them. And they’re everywhere in Wisconsin,” Millin said. 

In this corner of northeast Iowa, though, Millin said Mar-Mac is an early user. 

“In this area, there are very few cameras. There’s three in Clayton County [including Mar-Mac’s two] and two in Allamakee,” he added.

Flock LPRs capture an image of a vehicle’s license plate—front or back depending on the direction the vehicle is traveling—along with details like make, model and color.

“Essentially, when the vehicle goes by, it takes a quick picture,” Millin explained. “But it’s very difficult to see who’s driving or anybody that’s inside vehicles.”

The information is uploaded to a Flock database that could be accessed by local, state and federal agencies nationwide.

Mar-Mac’s two cameras, with two more pending, were funded through a two-year grant totaling around $24,000. They first went live this summer. One is currently located on Walton Street, in McGregor, and the other along Pleasant Ridge Road/B45, near the police station and city shop within Marquette city limits. Both spots were selected as main entries into McGregor-Marquette.

Because the other two LPRs would be placed on a state highway, Millin said their placement is pending Department of Transportation approval. 

“The ones we do have, they went through both city councils for approval. We can’t just put them up wherever we want,” he said.

Millin’s interest in LPRs stems from their use in nearby Prairie du Chien, Wis. He said the Mar-Mac Police Department’s calls for services and cases also out-pace staffing, making additional help beneficial.

“Just in the last few years, but throughout my entire career, whenever we would have an investigation involving some type of vehicle identification, a lot of times we didn’t have information. We didn’t have a license plate, we didn’t have vehicle color, vehicle make and model or a direction of travel. Prairie du Chien has LPRs, and over the last couple years, we found ourselves utilizing Prairie du Chien’s assistance attempting to locate vehicles, whether it be involved in a hit and run, traffic complaint, theft, a wanted person. I applied for a grant because we found out we were utilizing Prairie a lot. We also had a lot of cases that, if we had that technology over here, it would make things a lot easier,” Millin explained.

“Really,” he added, “it’s to see if we actually have a legitimate use for it to assist investigations.”

As of late November, Millin said the two Flock LPRs had assisted in 40 investigations since the cameras went live over the summer. Of those 40, 29 resulted in either an arrest or positive vehicle identification for Mar-Mac as well as other agencies.

“We have used them for traffic complaints. We’ve located wanted people. Also for thefts. Multiple thefts we were able to solve because of the LPRs,” Millin said. “On the flip side, not just for criminal investigations, but also for welfare checks.” 

For example, the Flock cameras early on helped locate a missing person with dementia in Guttenberg. This fall, technology helped locate a person in the area with suicidal ideations and another with homicidal ideations.

The latter, “we had to find fast,” Millin said. “He had plans to harm others.” 

The chief noted these instances show LPRs can be used positively too.

Still, he understands people’s concerns surrounding ever-changing technology and the growth of artificial intelligence. He’s hopeful state legislation and internal law enforcement agency policies will help curb potential abuse. 

Once data is uploaded to Flock servers, Millin said Iowa law restricts that data from being kept for more than 30 days. After that, it’s automatically deleted. Once it’s deleted, agencies can’t retrieve it. 

“I agree with that,” Millin said. “I think any data past 30 days is unnecessary, unless there’s a legitimate reason.” 

Millin’s understanding is Flock data is property of the agency and can’t be sold to a third party. 

Each user has their own individual login whose activity is tracked. 

“If you do a search, because you have to provide a reason—that’s a required data field in a search—our practice is to enter the call for service number in it. That way, when there is a search, we know exactly what call for service and we can log into our records management system and pull up that call for service,” he explained. “If I’m searching plate ABC 123, we can do an audit on it. I can go back to a call number and find it was for a missing person with license plate ABC 123.”

“If anybody does need to do a long-term search, like for investigations, you have to file a form. That form must be submitted to me and you have to give justification as to why. Why do you need this data? If it’s approved, that data is provided. If not, it’s denied. That request is only valid for 30 days, because it’s Iowa code. If you need continued data past 30 days, you need to put a longer request in,” he continued. “So there’s a continuous process to make sure that request is valid and there’s a legitimate purpose behind that request.”

Flock clients can access their own cameras, but can only access others within the network within reason. It’s largely based on individual state regulations.

Minnesota, for example, requires a mutual aid agreement with an agency to access its information. Because Mar-Mac does not have a mutual aid agreement with any Minnesota agency, the department could not access those cameras.

In Illinois, said Millin, you can’t search based on race, gender and other factors. “And you can’t use it if females want to seek an abortion outside of the state or something like that.”

When other agencies do a search on Mar-Mac’s LPRs, it will list the agency, user, reason and day and time. Each agency has the ultimate authority to approve, deny or restrict access to the cameras. 

“If I find out officer John Smith from Des Moines is using the system improperly, I can revoke Des Moines’s access to our cameras,” Millin said. “So we have a lot of control over the cameras.”

If an audit determines the system was used improperly, the user has a 60-day suspension from the network. If there’s a second occurrence, they lose access permanently. 

“Obviously, there would be an internal investigation behind both of them, but just in general, if you use it improperly, you will be held accountable,” Millin said.

Overall, he stressed, “We’re not there to track people. We’re not there to watch people. We’re not there to survey anybody. It’s strictly an investigative tool. Not only do we have Iowa code that restricts and limits data collection, but we have a pretty sound policy. As long as the agency has current policy that addresses or regulates the license plate reader network, I think it’ll hold people accountable.”

Millin will continue to evaluate the Flock cameras through the two-year trial of the grant. If successful, he said the department could potentially renew the grant. Without grant funding, money would have to come from the law enforcement district budget.

“At that time, we’d determine the cost benefit behind it. For my commission and everybody else, it depends on how beneficial they are,” Millin said.