Last June, the City of Austin ended its license plate reader program after a one-year pilot program. In that one year, the Austin Police Department logged 75 million plate scans that produced 165 arrests, roughly 133 prosecutions, and one missing person recovered. Investigators used the system to identify suspects in aggravated robberies, violent crimes, and cases that would not have been solved without it.
Then recently, less than one year after ending the pilot program, a shooting spree sent three suspects racing across the city in stolen cars and left four people injured. Just a few miles away in Manor, police used its license plate readers to locate the suspects’ vehicle, narrowing the search and leading to arrests within the hour. This prompted Mayor Kirk Watson to call for the renewal of the technology, because officers attempting a citywide manhunt no longer had the tool that might have more swiftly led to their identification and arrest before they escaped the city limits.
This same story has played out repeatedly across the region in recent weeks. In Round Rock, officers used their license plate reader system to locate a stolen vehicle and make an arrest just six minutes after the vehicle was reported stolen. This case also led to the recovery of a stolen firearm and revealed an organized string of additional vehicle burglaries and auto thefts. Just down the highway in Kyle, the police department’s LPR system flagged a stolen vehicle in the middle of a reckless driving incident, leading to the arrest of a 19-year-old with outstanding warrants on charges including aggravated assault against a public servant. This time, officers also recovered a firearm, stolen credit cards, and other burglary tools from the vehicle.
These cases are not fringe outcomes – they are examples of what properly governed LPR technology looks like in practice. Crimes are solved in record time, and dangerous criminals are taken off our streets thanks to one simple tool. The Austin pilot ended not because the technology failed, but because the program lacked the rules that would have allowed it to continue with public trust. That is a solvable problem, and solving it should be the goal, not abandoning the tool.
The privacy concerns raised in Austin were legitimate, and the safeguards that address them are straightforward: short data retention periods, documented justification for every search, strict access controls, and mandatory audit logs. Unfortunately, rather than adopting these requirements, Austin’s residents got the political outcome without the privacy protection they were seeking, and in the process, lost the crime-fighting benefits.
Round Rock made an arrest in six minutes. Kyle took a man with outstanding assault warrants off I-35 before he hurt someone. Manor helped close a shooting spree case inside an hour. That is what this technology does when it is deployed and governed well.
Officer Carl Kearney serves as the 1st Vice President of Training for the Central Texas Crime Prevention Association. Officer Kearney has been in law enforcement for 22 years, and with the Pflugerville Police Department for the past four years.