Orange County Sheriff | License plate readers

A policy that was actually written

Most plate reader policies documented on this site are the same document. A vendor supplies a template, an agency substitutes its own name, and the result is four or five pages that could belong to any county in California. That is not a criticism of the agencies; it is how these manuals work.

Orange County’s is not that. Policy 463 runs to five pages of procedure specific to this department, naming its own units and systems throughout: the Technology Division, Patrol Operations Command, the Real Time Operations Center, the Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center, the Digital Evidence Management System. Somebody sat down and wrote it.

It is worth going through what it actually requires, because several provisions are stronger than anything else this site has read.

Every search needs a number and a reason. Not a general authorisation to use the system, but a per-query record: “A report number or CAD call number shall be inputted into the search justification field before searching the ALPR data”, and elsewhere, “a detailed reason for access”.

Verification is mandatory, not advisable. The user “shall verify an ALPR response through the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS) before taking enforcement action that is based solely on an ALPR alert”. Most policies read elsewhere say should, or if practicable.

A camera alert is not a reason to pull someone over.

Members must have reasonable suspicion to initiate a traffic enforcement stop on the vehicle, independent from the Hot List or Custom Hot List alert.

And the policy tells deputies why that matters, in a sentence that shows someone thought about the person in the car:

If the record in the Hot List or Custom Hot List was created based on the wanted status of the registered owner (the registered owner has an outstanding warrant for their arrest), the Department Member must be cognizant of the fact the driver may not be the wanted subject

Deputies may not race to a hit. No Code 3 response absent exigent circumstances, and no leaving a call for service for one.

The audits are specified rather than gestured at. Monthly, by the supervisor where the user is assigned, with any potential violation forwarded to command and possible “revocation of ALPR system access, training and/or discipline”. And the audit record has a defined content: the user’s name, the date and time, the specific data accessed, the justification supplied, and a case, tip or CAD number.

Sharing requires a signed undertaking. Another agency asking for data must name itself and its requester, state its purpose, and commit in writing that the data will not be used in any manner prohibited by the plate reader statute, the Penal Code, or Government Code section 7284.6, which is the California Values Act. Then a memorandum of understanding, retained by the Technology Division.

And it bars one use by name. Non-criminal history information from these databases “should not be used for the purpose of immigration enforcement”. No other policy on this site says that.

Retention is six months: shorter than the one-year minimum most agencies publish, longer than the thirty days three others have chosen.

Section 463.7

Then there is the part that makes this county different from every other one documented here.

The policy begins its retention section by explaining who holds the data:

All ALPR data is hosted or otherwise provided using a “Third Party ALPR Provider” (such as those contracts originated by the Department, law enforcement contract partners, businesses, homeowners’ associations (“HOAs”, etc.).

And section 463.7 sets out what that permits:

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department can use ALPR equipment and data owned by Third Party ALPR providers if there is an agreement with the contracting entity.

So a camera bought by a shopping centre, or by the homeowners’ association at the entrance to a private street, can be searched by the Sheriff’s Department under an agreement between them.

That arrangement is common and it is not hidden. What is unusual is that this policy writes down what happens next, and the answer has consequences:

The owner of the “Third Party ALPR” system is responsible for the retention of data, as well as, any PRA requests related to the system they own. Any PRA requests for data from a Third Party ALPR system shall be governed by the Third Party ALPR provider’s PRA policy and practices.

A resident who wants to know what a camera recorded, and who can see it, is directed to the owner.

A shopping centre is not a public agency. A homeowners’ association is not a public agency. Neither has any obligation under the California Public Records Act, and “the Third Party ALPR provider’s PRA policy and practices” may quite properly amount to nothing at all.

This page is not saying the department has done anything wrong, and there is no evidence that it has. Sheriff’s departments have always been able to ask a business for its security footage, and nobody thinks a shop is a public agency. What changed is scale and searchability: a network of private cameras, continuously reading every plate that passes and queryable by an agency that did not buy them, is a different thing from a shopkeeper handing over a tape.

The policy is admirably clear that this is the arrangement. What it does not say is how many such cameras the department can reach, who signs the agreements, or where a list of them exists.

What is not established

No camera count. No vendor. No cost. No locations. No audit result, despite the policy specifying exactly what an audit report must contain.

That last one is the most answerable gap on this page. A policy that defines its own audit format has made a records request easy to write, and it is first on this county’s queue.

What this page does not cover

Orange County has 34 cities and most of them have their own police departments. This pass documents one agency. Everything else in the county is unswept, and that is a statement about how far we got rather than about anybody’s conduct.