Top 10 ways local governments can rebuild trust in crime-fighting technology

Across the U.S., at least 22 jurisdictions have deactivated ALPR cameras, 47 have canceled vendor contracts, and 25 have rejected proposed agreements altogether. In almost every case, communities didn't object to the idea of using technology to fight crime. They objected to finding out about it after the fact.

The good news? This is fixable. What follows are 10 practical, communications-driven steps local governments and law enforcement agencies can take, starting today, to build (or rebuild) public confidence.

1. Tell people before you buy, not after you're caught

The fastest way to kill public trust is the “reveal,” when a community discovers through a news story or public records request that cameras have been running in their neighborhood for months without anyone saying a word.

What happened: In Colorado a public records request uncovered more than 1,400 immigration-related searches of ALPR data. Roughly 500 residents packed a public meeting in opposition. The city ended its contract.

What to do: Host open house-style public meetings in every area where technology will be deployed before any contract is signed. Unlike traditional town halls, where a few loud voices can dominate the conversation, open houses allow residents to rotate through information stations, ask questions directly of staff, and provide input at their own pace. San Diego's TRUST Ordinance requires at least one community meeting per council district before any surveillance technology goes live, a model worth adapting. The Major Cities Chiefs Association warns that failure to operate transparently “will only exacerbate concerns related to misuse” and “negatively impact police-community relations.”

2. Publish your camera map

If people can't find out where cameras are, they'll assume there's a reason you're hiding it.

What happened: In Kentucky, a media investigation revealed that half the people charged in license plate reader cases were Black, against a roughly 25% Black share of the city's population. Council members demanded disclosure of camera locations the police department had declined to share publicly.

What to do: Create a publicly accessible, map-based camera location portal. Update it whenever cameras are added, moved, or removed. If there's a legitimate safety reason to withhold a specific location, say so and explain why. Don't default to blanket secrecy.

3. Write a use policy in plain English, and put it on your website

Why it matters: Most technology use policies, where they exist, are buried in contract appendices written in procurement-speak. If the public can't find or understand your rules, they can't hold you accountable, and they won't trust that rules exist.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) recommends defining permitted uses, authorized personnel, data access levels, and prohibited uses before deployment. The DOJ Bureau of Justice Assistance publishes a template covering purpose statements, retention limits, third-party sharing, and annual reviews.

What to do: Post a plain-language policy that answers five questions any resident would ask:

1. What does this technology do?
2. Who can access the data?
3. How long is the data kept?
4. Who is the data shared with?
5. How do I file a complaint?

If your policy can't survive those five questions in clear language, it isn't ready for public consumption.

4. Set data retention limits you can defend in a public setting

Why it matters: ALPR cameras scan every passing vehicle, not just suspects. How long that data sits in a searchable database is the question residents care about most, and the one agencies handle least convincingly.

The landscape is all over the map: New Hampshire deletes non-hit records in about three minutes; Virginia caps retention at 21 days; Oregon and Minnesota set limits at 30 and 60 days, respectively. Many jurisdictions have no limit at all.

What to do: Pick a retention window you can defend in a public setting. If your answer is “we keep it forever because we might need it someday,” you will lose the room. Short retention periods (30 to 60 days for non-hit data) are the emerging best practice. Then communicate it proactively: “Your data is automatically deleted after [X] days unless it is connected to a specific, documented criminal investigation.”

5. Audit access logs, and publish the results

What happened: A Washington Post investigation documented at least 50 law enforcement officers charged with or accused of misusing police databases for personal purposes, including stalking. Audit logs in multiple states have revealed searches tagged with terms unrelated to active criminal investigations.

These aren't hypothetical risks. They're documented failures that become exponentially more damaging when they surface through investigative journalism rather than proactive disclosure.

What to do: Conduct regular audits of who accessed the system, what they searched, and why. San Diego's Privacy Advisory Board reviews audit findings and has real authority, including recommending that the City Council reject continued ALPR use unless compliance improved. Publish audit summaries annually. When violations are found, say what happened and what you did about it. The cover-up is always worse than the finding.

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6. Don't let the vendor set your policy

What happened: Some of the most serious governance failures trace back to vendor contract defaults. In multiple jurisdictions, a “nationwide” search setting was turned on without the city's knowledge, allowing outside agencies, including federal agencies, to access local camera data without local authorization.  

When a community discovers its data was shared nationally because of a setting the city never reviewed, the city looks either negligent or complicit. Neither is recoverable without significant effort.

What to do: Take ownership of every setting in your vendor contract. The Major Cities Chiefs Association recommends that agency policy, not vendor defaults, should define what data sharing is in place, who is authorized to establish sharing relationships, and what procedures govern access. Then communicate clearly: “We control how this technology operates in our community. The vendor works for us, not the other way around.”

7. Address equity before someone else does it for you

What happened: A 2026 peer-reviewed geospatial study of surveillance technology deployment in Virginia found that ALPR cameras are frequently concentrated in and around communities of color, and that over-surveilled neighborhoods disproportionately bear the risk of misuse. The Brennan Center for Justice notes that “high crime” designations used to justify camera placement often reflect histories of biased enforcement rather than objective crime data.

In Kentucky, an LMPD study found Black subjects were subjected to discretionary searches 132.9% more often than white subjects, a disparity that persisted at 66.3% even after controlling for location, age, and stop reason.

What to do: Conduct a demographic analysis of proposed camera placement before deployment. Publish the methodology. If cameras are concentrated in specific neighborhoods, explain the criteria and how you ensured the analysis wasn't circular (using enforcement history to justify more enforcement). Report findings publicly and on an ongoing basis. Communities that hear “we analyzed this and here's what we found” respond very differently than communities that hear “we don't track that.”

8. Create civilian oversight with real authority

Why it matters: Advisory boards without decision-making power tend not to provide genuine accountability.

San Diego's Privacy Advisory Board has teeth: it used its authority to recommend the City Council reject continued ALPR use unless auditing practices improved.  

What to do: Establish a civilian oversight body with authority to review use policies, audit findings and annual reports, and make binding or near-binding recommendations. Staff it with community members who are vetted through a public application process, not appointees selected for agreeableness. Give it a public meeting schedule and an accessible public record. The existence of genuine oversight is itself a communications asset: it signals the agency has invited accountability rather than resisted it.

9. Get ahead of the legal curve

Why it matters: The U.S. Supreme Court's June 2026 ruling in Chatrie v. United States held that police obtaining cell-phone location data via a geofence warrant constitutes a Fourth Amendment search requiring probable cause. Legal scholars widely view the decision as directly undermining the reasoning courts have used to uphold warrantless ALPR database queries. If courts extend Chatrie to stored plate reader data, warrants could be required before searching ALPR databases.

What to do: Don't wait for a court to tell you. Consider adopting warrant requirements proactively, as communities like Durango, Colorado are actively debating. Frame it as leadership: “We believe this technology is valuable, and we believe it should operate within clear legal boundaries. We're not waiting for a court order to do the right thing.” That's a far stronger public position than scrambling to rewrite policies after an adverse ruling.

10. Talk about what the technology actually did

Why it matters: Agencies that deploy technology and then go silent about outcomes leave a vacuum that opponents fill with worst-case narratives.

Los Altos, California reported a 41% decrease in residential burglaries between 2023 and 2025. Campbell, California reported reductions exceeding 70% in overall crime and more than 80% in residential burglaries. A multi-agency operation across the Carolinas used ALPR data to dismantle a $1.5 million luxury car theft ring.

What to do: Publish an annual outcomes report. Include the numbers: cases supported, crime categories affected, stolen vehicles recovered, missing persons located. Be honest about limitations: independent research suggests ALPR effectiveness is strongest for vehicle theft and less clearly demonstrated for broader violent crime reduction. Credibility comes from specificity and candor, not from overclaiming.

The bottom line

None of these 10 steps require abandoning effective technology. They require communicating about it honestly, governing it transparently, and engaging with communities as partners rather than afterthoughts.

The jurisdictions getting this wrong all share a common trait: they treated technology deployment as a procurement decision. The ones getting it right recognized it as a public trust decision.

The camera on the pole is the easy part. Everything that happens around it, the engagement, the transparency, the accountability, is what determines how successful the technology deployment is in the community.

Technology doesn't build trust. Communication does.