It's been a year since Laguna Beach police started automatically scanning license plates, and already more than 30 people have been arrested.
The City Council began talking about the Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR) in October 2013 at the request of the Laguna Beach Police Employees' Assn. The city eventually contracted with Vigilant Solutions for nearly $100,000, which was offset with a federal grant.
Using a unified, countywide ALPR project management system, the city is able to reduce its overhead by letting the Anaheim Police Department serve as the county's focal point with the vendor. In all, 24 police agencies throughout the county use the system, according to city records.
The ALPR high-speed cameras are located near all three entrances to the city. They take a picture, scan plate numbers and then automatically cross-reference the data with a stolen-vehicle database. So far, 30 stolen vehicles and six stolen plates have been recovered and 31 arrests made, according to Sgt. Tim Kleiser, police spokesman.
"It has been beneficial for us as another investigative tool," Kleiser said. "It's helped detectives with cases when they're trying to narrow down a timeline with something or whether that person actually came into the city or not. It helps out."
Felony warrants are also sometimes tagged to license plates, which can result in other types of arrests.
While the ALPR system is fairly new to Laguna, general surveillance cameras have been in place for some time. Those cameras are located throughout the city, including nine sites added in the fall of 2013. That contract was awarded to low-bidder Pro-911 Systems, a Laguna Beach company.
These public cameras are not the only ones that blanket the city. There are numerous private ones that monitor businesses, beach cams and fire-prevention cameras placed in wilderness areas. The high school is also installing new cameras because of recent vandalism.
Supporters claim the cameras help prevent crime, but the studies are not as definitive on that point. Also, the American Civil Liberties Union keeps a watchful eye on the overall issue and has filed various lawsuits over the years.
Most recently in October, the ACLU of Southern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation asked the California Supreme Court to rule that "license plate data, collected indiscriminately on millions of drivers by police across the state, are not investigative records and should be made available to the public."
"Drivers would be surprised to learn that they are under investigation every time they drive in public," Peter Bibring, director of police practices at ACLU SoCal, said in a statement. "The Fourth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution exactly to prevent law enforcement from conducting mass, suspicionless investigations under 'general warrants' that target no specific person or place and never expire."
But Laguna's Kleiser said the ALPR system is narrowly defined to a simple use — finding stolen cars. Anything more is left up to regular police work.
People have tried to expand the system. One community group in Laguna wanted to piggyback on the data collection and use it to make better traffic counts. But the city said no.
In addition, cities often limit the time that the data can be kept. For example, the Ohio State Highway Patrol makes sure that "all 'non-hit' captures shall be deleted immediately," according to the ACLU.
This type of data retention policy is important because of storage costs, possible data breaches and other unnecessary privacy risks.
Finally, with the advent of sophisticated software tools — facial recognition, real-time analytics, predictive modeling, data mining, etc. — the potential for acting on this treasure trove of information has never been greater.
And it's only going to get more tempting. The costs of these systems are dropping. The speed and reliability are improving. But beyond that, the political and community resistance to these types of systems is evaporating.
It's as if we're just used to being watched.
The bottom line is when bad guys get caught, residents feel better, so the cameras keep rolling.
DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.