At the September 20th City Council meeting the Urbana Police Department (UPD) presented their desire to deploy a network of expensive license plate cameras for the stated purpose of solving violent crimes. These automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) automatically read license plate numbers, photograph vehicles, save the data into a searchable database for the police department, and share the data with other law enforcement agencies.
Urbana Police Chief Bryant Seraphin has held that the ALPR network, initially 20 cameras then possibly a multiple of that, will be used for solving violent crimes such as shootings. He has made several comments indicating that there isn’t any interest in using the expansive tracking system for minor infractions. However, Seraphin and other promoters for ALPRs such as Mayor Diane Marlin, have thus far refused to make any written policies about what types of surveillance the ALPRs will and will not be used for.
The absence of any written rules or restrictions upon the Police Department for their use of such a system, along with the lack of any statistical data showing that ALPRs actually reduce crime, resulted in the Urbana City Council Committee of the Whole tabling the proposal on October 4th, to be considered at a later date.
Given the level of attention that ALPRs have received at recent Urbana City meetings, it is surprising that there has been no mention of their originally conceived purpose in Urbana: parking enforcement. On June 22nd, 2020 the Urbana City Council approved an annual budget which included $46,000 (plus $11,500 annually) for implementing a license plate reader system on a City vehicle.
Given that the City of Urbana has already resolved to use automatic license plate recognition to enforce the most minor infractions, it is rather suspect for the same City leadership to now suggest that their newest system would only be used to solve violent crime. It would seem inevitable that the Urbana Police Department would continue to fill the gap and use these systems to observe and track all manner of activity which they deem suspicious, and perhaps that is why the Mayor’s office has refused to put any usage limitations in writing.
Here is a news story for television by the Police Chief and Mayor: https://www.wcia.com/news/city-looks-at-adding-safety-tools-to-disrupt-violence/
Here is a petition that is going around electronically to be submitted Wednesday, Oct. 13:
Dear Members of the Urbana City Council:
As citizens of Urbana who are concerned about the exponential increase of gun violence and retaliatory shootings in our city, we support the purchase of Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) for the following reasons:
1) ALPRs are an investigative tool that can help identify vehicles involved in shootings and other crimes.
2) ALPRs provide information that witnesses and victims are unable, unwilling, or afraid to provide.
3) ALPRs improve county-wide collaboration across jurisdictions to solve shootings and other crimes.
4) ALPRs remove human error and bias from vehicle identification.
5) ALPRs are cost-effective and can be strategically deployed.
6) ALPRs data is owned and protected by the City.
7) ALPRs can help disrupt the pattern of retaliatory shootings that has traumatized families and neighborhoods in recent years.
Thank you for your time, service, and consideration.
Sincerely,
Urbana Citizens
To sign the petition, please follow this link:
https://forms.gle/FEMuJvZbyFM9RQWcA
(If signing, please do so by Tuesday, October 12. The petition will be submitted the morning of Wednesday, October 13.)