PeoriaStory

ALPRs need regulation

PEORIA, IL -- ALPRs need regulation and the Peoria City Council should do it.

Peoria Area ACLU Chapter

Statement Requesting Regulation of Automatic License Plate Readers in Peoria

January, 2022

Submitted by Elaine Hopkins, Peoria ACLU Board member, 1825 E. Maple Ridge Dr., Peoria,, IL 61614  309-231-5758.

To Mayor and Members of the City Council:

The Peoria Area ACLU chapter respectfully requests regulations on the use of Automatic License Plate Readers in the city of Peoria.  A  contract to purchase and use these devices was approved on Nov. 23, 2021 by the city council.

ALPR technology poses a risk to civil liberties and privacy, and also, importantly, can become a tool to surveil and monitor Black and brown communities. These are the very communities that already suffer from significant over-policing, whether in Peoria or other communities across the country. Giving powerful tools to police to pursue minor infractions only aggravates this circumstance. 

The Mayor, the Council and police officials in Peoria clearly view this technology as an answer to recent spikes in violent crime. The investment in this contract and the time it will take to deploy, train staff and integrate the system into the work of the Peoria Police Department takes away time and resources from community-based solutions that have been proven to reduce crime.

In short, we can strengthen our community and reduce crime if we invest in people and neighborhoods, rather than embrace surveillance tools that will further undermine the relationship between the Peoria Police and the neighbors they serve.  A technological panacea is not the approach this community should take. 

We urge the council to approve four specific items:

1. The police department must develop and share publicly a specific privacy policy regulating the use of ALPRs. Such a policy should include specific detail about who can access the system, how long data is to be stored, who has access to stored data, what the punishment would be for violating the privacy policy among other issues. This transparency is critical in order to assure that further damage to community relations is not done.
2. Police should publicly share where ALPR technology is being utilized and how decisions about deployment are made. Suggestions have been made that placement will be in “high crime” areas and locations that have frequent traffic accidents. This general language should not be a formula to monitor the everyday activities of Black and brown communities by building an electronic moat around these neighborhoods. 
3. The City Council must insist on an annual report on the efficacy and operation of the ALPR system. We urge the City Council to insist upon a yearly audit and public report that includes:

1.     The operating cost of the system.
2.     Its efficacy -- to what extent and how has it contributed to diminishing     violent crime. If the system does not demonstrate that it significantly     reduces crime, the contract should sunset.
3.     The outcome of the disciplinary policy -- in general terms, for     infractions of their ALPR policy
4.     Other purposes for which the Police Department used license plate data.

4. The Peoria Police Department should not share data collected by ALPRs with any other law enforcement agency which does not abide by a privacy policy that does not align with the Peoria policy.
   

Thank you for your time.  We encourage you to fully enact these regulations before allowing use of this technology.

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Pipeline threats

MACOMB, IL -- The proposed CO2 pipeline for several western Illinois counties is a terrible idea.  Building it puts more pollutants into the environment than it would capture, according to Food and Water Watch. 

It's failed elsewhere, and even worse: "Running a carbon capture system is incredibly energy-intensive — it essentially requires building a new power plant to run the system, which would create another new source of air and carbon pollution. That undermines the whole goal of capturing carbon in the first place. While our country emits roughly 5 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year, removing 1 billion tons of that through direct air capture would require nearly the entire electricity output of the United States."

That's enough -- just say 'no.'

 -- Elaine Hopkins