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LA County Sheriff | License plate readers

About 1,200 fixed cameras, most of them paid for by the cities the Sheriff polices under contract. In September 2025 the Board told the Sheriff to bar civil-immigration use of the data. The policy now says so, seven months later.

At a glance

Fixed cameras
About 1,200, a majority of them in contract cities [5]
Patrol cars with mobile readers
About 44 of 2,400, most funded by contract cities [5]
Who runs it
The Advanced Surveillance and Protection Unit: four sworn deputies and one civilian [5]
Current policy
MPP 5-09/550.05, ALPR Privacy Policy, revised 22 April 2026 [1] [8]
Retention of plate reads
Two years, then logical archiving. Reduced from five years [1] [7]
Sharing for civil immigration enforcement
Prohibited by the policy, except where State or County law expressly requires it or a judicial warrant compels it [1]
Sharing with other agencies
Permitted only to a public agency as California law defines it, only under an inter-agency agreement with an annual sunset clause, and only after checking the agency has not been named by the Attorney General for SB 34 non-compliance [1]
Who authorises a disclosure
A designated Custodian of Records, in writing, after documented review [1]
Audits
Weekly usage audits by the unit that runs the system, plus an annual inspection of the audit database by the same unit [1] [5]
Reporting to oversight
Semi-annual written reports on access logs to the Inspector General, the Civilian Oversight Commission and the Board, with a summary published on the Department's website [1]
First such summary published
none yet. The policy took effect 22 April 2026 and the first falls due at the end of September 2026. Not overdue as of 26 August 2026 [1] [8]
Where the cameras are
not stated in any document read. "A majority in contract cities" is as specific as the record gets [5]
Vendor
not named in any policy, report or board document read for this page [1]
Who has received the data
not published. This is what the semi-annual reports are for [1]

How it happened

  1. Context

    The Department gives the Inspector General its numbers

    About 1,200 fixed plate reader cameras, a majority of them in contract cities. About 44 of 2,400 patrol cars carry mobile readers, most of those funded by contract cities too. The Advanced Surveillance and Protection Unit that runs the system is four sworn deputies and one civilian, and it audits system usage weekly. [5]

  2. Decision

    The Board votes 4-1 to restrict what the data can be used for

    On a revised motion by Supervisors Solis and Hahn, moved by Horvath and seconded by Hahn, the Board asks the Sheriff to amend the plate reader privacy policy within 90 days so the data cannot be disclosed for civil immigration enforcement, to route disclosures through a Custodian of Records, to report semi-annually on access logs, to train every credentialed user, to review the data-sharing agreements, and to report back in 120 days. Supervisor Barger voted no. [3] [4]

  3. Context

    The bill the Board backed is vetoed

    The Board sent a five-signature letter to the Governor supporting SB 274, which would have capped retention of non-hit plate reads at 60 days statewide. The Governor vetoed it. The Sheriff's later report-backs state that the SB 274 provisions were left out of the amended policy for that reason. [6] [9]

  4. Context

    The Inspector General reads the draft and finds one thing missing

    The Department gives the Office of Inspector General a draft of the amended policy. The Inspector General finds it incorporates every action item the Board asked for, and objects only to the retention period. [6]

  5. Context

    The Sheriff tells the Board the deadline will be missed, and why

    Drafting was finished inside the 90 days. Enactment will not be, because the new training requirements have to go through meet-and-confer with the labour unions. The Department asks for an extension past 14 January 2026 and offers an update every 90 days until the policy is enacted. It also reports that no current data-sharing agreement permits civil-immigration disclosure. [9]

  6. Decision

    The revised policy takes effect

    Seven months and six days after the Board asked for it. The Department transmitted the enacted policy to the Board on 11 May 2026 and published it on its transparency page. [1] [8] [10]

  7. Decision

    The County agrees the retention is two years and declines to look again

    Answering the 2025-2026 Civil Grand Jury, which recommended re-examining the two-year retention period, the County records that the Department recently cut it from five years to two and that the recommendation "has been considered but will not be implemented". [7]

What is actually here

About twelve hundred fixed cameras, and about forty-four patrol cars out of two thousand four hundred. The Department gave those figures to the county’s Inspector General in an email in March 2025, and they are the only counts in the published record.

The second half of each figure matters more than the first. A majority of the fixed cameras sit in cities that contract with the Sheriff for policing and bought the equipment themselves. Most of the equipped patrol cars were funded the same way and are assigned to those cities. The network is county-run and city-financed, which is why it is unevenly distributed and why its rules are not uniform either. Santa Clarita, which the Sheriff polices under contract, funded cameras in November 2024 on the condition that images be deleted within thirty days. The Sheriff keeps its own for two years. The Inspector General names this and observes that residents therefore have different privacy protections in different parts of the same county.

The unit that runs all of it is five people.

The policy the Board asked for

On 16 September 2025 the Board of Supervisors passed a motion by Supervisors Solis and Hahn asking the Sheriff to change the plate reader privacy policy within ninety days. It carried four to one, on Supervisor Horvath’s motion seconded by Supervisor Hahn, with Supervisor Barger voting no.

The central ask was one sentence. It is now in the policy, and it reads:

Disclosed, transferred, or otherwise made available for civil immigration enforcement purposes, except when disclosure is expressly required by State or County law or pursuant to a judicial warrant.

The rest arrived with it. Any disclosure at all now needs written authorisation from a designated Custodian of Records after a documented review. Inter-agency agreements must carry a sunset clause and be renewed annually, and before renewing one the Department must check that the other agency has not been named by the Attorney General for failing to comply with SB 34. Shared hotlist data expires after twenty-four hours without a refresh. Every credentialed user is trained on SB 34 and SB 54 and retrained every year.

And the Department must report to its own overseers twice a year on who has been looking at the data:

In addition to the annual audit, the Department shall provide the Office of Inspector General, the Civilian Oversight Commission, and the Board of Supervisors with a semi-annual written report summarizing ALPR data or system access logs.

The version for the Inspector General is unredacted. The version for the Civilian Oversight Commission may be redacted only where the law requires it. A summary of each is to be published on the Department’s website.

That is a better set of rules than most of what this site has read. It is worth saying so plainly.

It took seven months, and the Department said why

The Board asked for ninety days. The policy took effect on 22 April 2026, about seven months after the vote.

The Department did not go quiet in between. It wrote to the Board on 11 December 2025, 13 January 2026, 21 April 2026 and 11 May 2026. The December letter said the drafting was finished inside the ninety days but that enactment would slip, because the new annual training requirement changes working conditions and therefore has to be bargained with the labour unions. It asked for an extension and offered an update every ninety days until the policy was in force. The April letter reported the bargaining under way and expected to conclude before the end of May. The May letter attached the enacted policy.

Meanwhile the Inspector General read the draft on 10 November 2025 and reported that it incorporated every action item the Board had asked for. The Civilian Oversight Commission returned comments on 8 January 2026 and was briefed on the revision on 19 March 2026.

This is what an oversight process working looks like. It is slow, it is documented at every step, and the delay had a stated cause that anyone can read.

The number the Board did not set

The Board’s motion never named a retention period. It supported SB 274, which would have capped non-hit plate reads at sixty days statewide, and it said Los Angeles County could lead the state. The Governor vetoed SB 274 on 1 October 2025, two weeks after the vote.

So the Department chose the number itself. It cut retention from five years to two, matching the Los Angeles Police Department. The Inspector General accepted that as a reduction and kept recommending something else: a study of when stored images actually stop being useful, so the period can be set by evidence rather than by what the neighbouring agency does.

The 2025-2026 Civil Grand Jury made the same recommendation. On 1 September 2026 the County’s answer went to the Board:

This recommendation has been considered but will not be implemented because LASD believes the current two-year retention period remains appropriate based on operational and investigative needs.

Two years is where this sits. The Department’s stated reasons are cold cases, stalking investigations, and establishing a pattern of movement over time, which is a candid description of what a two-year archive of everyone’s driving is for.

One loose end: a different section of the same manual, 5-09/550.50, still says plate data is reviewed for retention at five years. Both sections were published on the same day, 26 August 2026, and the five-year section shows no revision date.

What is not on the record

Where the cameras are. Which agencies hold data-sharing agreements. What the weekly audits find. Who has requested plate data and why.

That last one has a date attached now. The policy requires the first semi-annual access-log summary within ninety days of the end of the second quarter of 2026, which is the end of September 2026, and requires a summary of it on the Department’s public transparency page. As of 26 August 2026 that page carries the policy, the Board’s motion, the four report-backs and a link to one recorded public forum. No access-log summary yet, and none is late yet.

That is the single most useful thing to check in this county after September.

On the map

The community has mapped 3331 devices of this type in the county on OpenStreetMap. These are community reports: the vendor and operator of each point are unverified, and none is confirmed to belong to this system. See them on the map →

Street names from reverse geocoding — © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

What we do not know

What you can do

Show up

Systems like this one are approved by boards, councils and committees that meet in public. We have not yet confirmed where each of them meets in Los Angeles County.

What we have documented in Los Angeles County →

Protect yourself

Practical steps to shrink your personal data trail. Our guides publish at launch; until then, EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense is the best starting point.

Surveillance Self-Defense →

Sources

  1. 1.
    Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Manual of Policy and Procedures 5-09/550.05, "Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) Privacy Policy", revised 22 April 2026 · Primary document · · accessed
  2. 2.
    Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Manual of Policy and Procedures 5-09/550.50, "Data" · Primary document · accessed
  3. 3.
    Revised motion by Supervisors Hilda L. Solis and Janice Hahn, "Safeguarding Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR) Data to Restore Community Trust and Prevent Improper Civil Immigration Enforcement", 16 September 2025 · Meeting record · · accessed
  4. 4.
    Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Statement of Proceedings, 16 September 2025, item 20 · Meeting record · · accessed
  5. 5.
    Los Angeles County Office of Inspector General, "Reform and Oversight Efforts: Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, April through June 2025" · Primary document · accessed
  6. 6.
    Los Angeles County Office of Inspector General, "Reform and Oversight Efforts: Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, January through March 2026" · Primary document · accessed
  7. 7.
    County of Los Angeles, "Responses to the 2025-2026 Civil Grand Jury Final Report Recommendations", board letter of 1 September 2026, response to Recommendation 9.2 · Meeting record · · accessed
  8. 8.
    Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Automated License Plate Recognition transparency page · Primary document · accessed
  9. 9.
    Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, "Report Back on Motion on Safeguarding Automated License Plate Readers Data", 11 December 2025 · Primary document · · accessed
  10. 10.
    Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, "Report Back on Motion on Safeguarding Automated License Plate Readers Data", 11 May 2026, attaching the enacted policy · Primary document · · accessed

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