St. Louis County Executive Sam Page has ordered a review of automated license plate reader cameras on county property as concerns grow locally and nationwide about privacy and misuse of the technology.
In Brentwood, a police officer was accused of using Flock Safety’s system to track his ex-wife during a contentious divorce. Investigators determined the officer’s actions did not constitute a crime under Missouri law.
In St. Charles County, police canceled their contract with Flock Safety and removed 28 cameras after a former employee admitted conducting personal searches. Court filings show Melissa Renee Smith faces two counts of misuse of official information by a public servant and is accused of improperly searching the system more than 200 times over three years.
Page signed an executive order Friday directing the county’s Department of Transportation and Public Works to audit cameras located on St. Louis County property or within county rights-of-way. The department will also review its procedures for authorizing automated license plate reader installations and agreements with municipalities, political subdivisions and police departments that operate or maintain the technology.
“Technology can be an important tool for law enforcement, but the public deserves to know that it is being used responsibly and for legitimate public safety purposes,” Page said. “Governor Kehoe has raised important questions about safeguards at the state level, and I want to ensure we take a careful look at how these systems are being used on County property.”
The order also calls on the St. Louis County Board of Police Commissioners and the St. Louis County Police Department to review existing policies and procedures governing automated license plate readers and consider revisions establishing clear requirements for their use.
Automated license plate readers, commonly known as ALPRs, capture images of passing vehicles and record information including license plate numbers. Flock Safety, one of the largest providers of the technology, uses artificial intelligence to identify vehicle characteristics such as make, model and color, allowing law enforcement agencies to search the information during investigations.
Police departments say the technology can help investigators develop leads in cases involving stolen vehicles, illegal dumping, missing people and homicides.
But the use of the technology has also raised concerns about privacy, government surveillance and the potential for employees with access to use the systems for personal purposes.
Edward McPherson, a Washington University professor and author of a book about mapping and surveillance, said his concerns extend beyond individual cases of alleged misuse to the amount of information the systems collect about ordinary drivers and the broader implications of constant surveillance.
“If you’re driving a car, you can’t really opt out of Flock,” McPherson said. “It’s always going, it’s 24/7 and it’s just scooping up so much data.”
McPherson said his biggest concerns are the scale of the data collection and the use of AI to analyze it.
“It’s both the amount of data collected, the indiscriminate collection of everything, and then also the sifting through it with AI,” McPherson said.
More than 100 law enforcement employees nationwide have been implicated in misuse of Flock’s system, according to The Washington Post.
Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe also signed an executive order Sept. 16 establishing safeguards for automated license plate readers used by agencies receiving state funding. The order sets requirements for accessing and using the information and generally requires license plate and vehicle data to be deleted within 30 days.
In a statement to First Alert 4, St. Louis County Police said the department already has policies and safeguards governing ALPR use, including a 30-day data retention period and restrictions on sharing data outside the Regional Information and Intelligence Center.