Automated License Plate Readers (Flock Cameras)

We use them as an investigative tool to generate leads, not as general monitoring of residents. After a crime is reported, or when a vehicle is tied to a hotlist such as a stolen car, wanted person, or AMBER Alert, the system can produce a timely lead that we would otherwise have to build from memory, delayed reports, or a much slower canvass. It has assisted this Department with serious cases, including homicides, robberies, child exploitation, stolen vehicles, and the recovery of missing adults and children. The cameras capture a vehicle on a public roadway, including the plate, vehicle characteristics, date, time, and location. They do not use facial recognition and do not identify people by race, gender, or other personal characteristics.

Flock is distinct from traditional surveillance. It records limited vehicle-related information that only authorized personnel may access for legitimate law-enforcement purposes. 

We don't treat this as round-the-clock public tracking. We keep data for 30 days unless it is saved to an active case. Searches require a reason and are logged. Hotlist alerts are human-verified before action is taken. No one sits and watches every car. The question is whether the Department should have a lawful way to look back, for a limited time, when a victim reports a crime or a child is missing. We believe that limited capability is justified. What is not justified is using the system without policy, training, audits, and real consequences for misuse. Those controls separate an investigative tool from unchecked surveillance.

We have not found a policy violation or misuse of Lee’s Summit data. Ending the program would remove a tool that has helped solve serious crimes and recover missing people, while leaving in place the many other cameras and AI tools that already exist in public and private spaces. The better course is to keep the capability, enforce strict rules, and not share our data without safeguards in place for appropriate use only by law enforcement. Currently, we are pausing outside sharing, working with regional partners on stronger safeguards, and reporting back to City leadership and elected officials about these efforts. While privacy questions will help improve how we use the technology, it is our desire not to abandon a tool that has helped protect the community.

We use the system under current law and under advice of City legal counsel. License plates are displayed on public roadways, and courts have generally treated that kind of observation differently from tracking a person’s private communications or entering a home. Our program is limited: 30-day retention unless a record is tied to a case, searches require a legitimate law enforcement purpose and are logged, hotlist hits are human-verified, and we do not use facial recognition.

Some privacy advocates argue that a large, searchable network of plate reads is closer to the long-term location tracking the U.S. Supreme Court has scrutinized in other contexts. That theory is being tested in courts around the country. It is not settled that a locally controlled ALPR program with short retention and use limits is unconstitutional. We do not decide constitutionality in the field. We follow statute, case law as it stands, and the City Attorney’s guidance, and we will adjust if a binding decision requires it.

Because the law has not held that this use is unlawful, and ending the contract now would drop a tool that has helped us with violent crime, stolen vehicles, and missing-person cases before any court has required that result. Waiting is not ignoring the issue. It means we stay inside current law, tighten our own safeguards, and pause outside sharing while regional partners work through the same questions. If a court with authority over Missouri operations rules that this technology, or a particular way of using it, violates the Constitution, the City will comply. Until then, the responsible course is policy, audit, and legal review.

Yes. The executed agreement includes a non-appropriation provision (Clause 14.4) that allows the City to stop funding the contract subject to the contract’s terms. The Department’s role is inform officials of what investigative capability is lost if the cameras are discontinued.

Yes. Ordinance 7386 (October 10, 2013) set Council-level restrictions on ALPR. Bill 23-089, adopted May 2, 2023, repealed it. The Public Safety Advisory Board had supported expanding ALPR and rescinding that ordinance in January 2023. After the repeal, use is governed by accredited Department policy (General Order 200.29), 30-day retention unless needed for a case, and law-enforcement-only distribution — not by a standalone ALPR ordinance. The Flock purchase itself was approved later that year (Bill 23-156, August 2023).

Day-to-day policy, user permissions, sharing settings, and audit procedures are operational and sit with the Department and City Manager, within the approved contract, Department policy, and state records requirements. Retention would not be changed without notification to Council.

City Council approved the contract in 2023 under its authority to fund police operations and equipment. Missouri law does not require a ballot question for this kind of investigative tool, just as it does not require a vote for records systems, radios, or cameras already used in the Department. Public input still matters. That is why we publish a transparency portal, answer Council questions, and are reviewing safeguards with regional partners.

The City is paying roughly $175,000 a year under a five-year contract of about $909,000. The return shows up in work product, not in a single dollar-per-arrest figure. In 2025, the system generated a large volume of hotlist alerts, including tens of thousands tied to stolen plates and stolen vehicles. It has been used on homicides, robberies, child exploitation, missing-person cases, and a recent AMBER Alert in which the child was recovered. No one in Lee’s Summit has been injured or detained based on inaccurate Flock data, and we have not found a policy violation since implementation.

The return is investigative time saved and leads that would otherwise depend on a witness remembering a plate. A monetary “return” is calculated more in the cost of not having those leads on a violent or time-sensitive case. Additional use statistics are published on the Department’s transparency portal.

Flock is a lead-generating tool. A hotlist hit or a search is not, by itself, a case clearance. Resolution still requires the rest of the investigation and the criminal justice system.

What we can say from records: the system is used regularly for theft, stolen vehicles, wanted persons, assaults, hit-and-run, DWI, and missing-person work. It has assisted on serious Lee’s Summit cases, including homicide, robbery, child exploitation, and an AMBER Alert. Flock was mentioned as a lead in over 2,300 case reports in which the system was used as an investigative tool or to develop leads. Calls-for-service notes mention Flock over 1,200 times across multiple offense types.

Any budget item can be redirected. Council is entitled to weigh budget expenses against staffing, overtime, radios, or other tools. This funding buys a specific capability: a short look-back after a crime and real-time alerts on stolen vehicles, wanted persons, and missing-person cases. Those functions are not replaced by adding one officer or one extra patrol shift. If the contract is ended, that investigative capacity is lost.

The system records a vehicle on a public road: plate, visible vehicle characteristics, date, time, and location. It does not use facial recognition and does not build a file on a person by name, race, or home address. Lee’s Summit owns its data. We do not sell it. Private companies and the public cannot search our records.

Flock is a private vendor, as are many companies that provide the City software, storage, and hardware. Agreements are reviewed for acceptable terms. Access is limited to authorized users, every search requires a reason and is logged, and data is deleted after 30 days unless it is saved to an active case. We have found no leak and no policy violation. We paused outside sharing so we can tighten how search information is entered and how open investigations are protected — not because data was sold or leaked.

The City owns the data. Flock provides the cameras, software, and cloud infrastructure. Vendor staff activity in our account is logged in the event log. Per agreements, they are not to be in the system without a business reason such as setup, support, or processing a records request. That is still vendor access to a system that holds our data, which is why contract language and audit logs matter.

Flock’s published LPR policy states that it may access, use, preserve, or disclose LPR data if legally required to do so, or if it has a good-faith belief that access is reasonably necessary to comply with legal process, enforce the customer agreement, or address security, privacy, fraud, or technical issues. Flock also states that it uses a small fraction of LPR images (less than one percent), stripped of metadata and identifying information, to improve its services through machine learning.

Flock advises that plate-read data is deleted on the customer’s retention schedule unless saved to a case. Flock’s current published default is a rolling deletion schedule. Lee’s Summit’s setting and Department policy remain 30 days. Anonymized, de-identified imagery — for example, teaching the system to recognize a blue car versus a silver car — is not the same as keeping a searchable file of Lee’s Summit plates. We will continue to hold the vendor to that representation in writing.

No. A plate read is not probable cause, and a hotlist alert is not an arrest. Officers still have to verify the hit and develop lawful grounds before they stop or detain anyone. Officers do not stop residents utilizing the Flock tool for their everyday travel or for traffic violations unrelated to a criminal investigation. Data on vehicles that are not tied to a crime or an official hotlist ages out in 30 days. The burden of proof in a criminal case remains on the government. Used as designed, this is a lead-generating tool. Used without verification or for personal curiosity, it is a policy violation.

Department policy prohibits using the system for immigration enforcement. We do not sell the data. We have not had a practice of allowing access to or sharing our ALPR data with ICE for immigration work. System filters are enabled that exclude City devices from searches related to immigration enforcement or reproductive care. That applies to internal users and to organizations we would directly share with, and to statewide or nationwide network searches if we participate.

Because the remaining risk people point to is the broader vendor network, we have paused outside sharing to investigate better safeguards further.

The system can be queried only for a legitimate law-enforcement purpose. It is not a tool for monitoring lawful medical care or for checking whether someone visited a clinic. Filters exclude City devices from searches related to reproductive care. If a vehicle is tied to an actual criminal investigation — a warrant, a violent crime, a stolen vehicle, a missing person, or another criminal offense — investigators may use ALPR the same way they would use any other lawful lead. We do not use this tool to look for legal marijuana activity or health-care travel. Personal use, harassment, and any use based solely on a protected class are prohibited.

Yes. There have been documented cases in other agencies of plate-reader or similar systems being used for personal reasons. That is why access control matters. What prevents it here is not the camera. It is the rules around the camera: authorized users only, a required reason for every search, a permanent log, audits, flags for repeated or high-volume searches and date ranges beyond 30 days, and discipline — up to termination and, where it fits, criminal exposure for misuse of official systems. Personal use and harassment are prohibited. We have found no policy violation in Lee’s Summit. The pause on outside sharing is an extra control so another agency’s user is not querying our cameras while we tighten those safeguards. Accountability through employment action and, when warranted, criminal charges is how a control system is supposed to work when misuse occurs.

Access is limited to authorized users. Searches require a documented reason, are logged, and are audited. Policy lists prohibited uses, including personal use, harassment, immigration enforcement, traffic enforcement as such, and any action based solely on a protected class. Hotlist alerts must be human-verified before action. Data not tied to a case is deleted after 30 days. Network sharing permissions and the Department’s acceptable-use and prohibited-use rules, published on the transparency portal, apply to internal users and to any agency that would be granted access. We have paused outside sharing while those controls are reviewed.

The City controls whether to grant sharing permissions — for example, whether another agency may search our data or receive alerts. Use is supposed to follow our acceptable-use and prohibited-use rules. Once another agency has obtained a result, Lee’s Summit does not control that agency’s records laws, prosecutors, or public-records practices. That loss of control after a share is a principal reason we paused outside sharing and are discussing written agreements and additional safeguards so misuse can be reported back to us.

The Department’s public Flock portal lists 54 LPR and related cameras.

Reads are kept 30 days and then automatically deleted. The only records kept longer are those pulled into an active investigation or case file. There is no running archive of every car that drove through the city. The portal recently showed more than 800,000 unique plate reads in a 30-day window. The vendor vehicle-volume dashboard for August 4 through September 2, 2026, showed 15,522,949 total vehicle reads, or about 517,400 reads per day. Those are reads, not unique vehicles, and not searches.

Access is limited to authorized Department users. There are 179 active Police Department user accounts in the system. A public search log cited for June 27 to July 27, 2026, showed 2,699 queries by 89 users. Those two figures answer different questions: how many accounts exist, and how many users ran a search in that sample month. After the pause on outside sharing, other agencies are not searching the Lee’s Summit database. The 2023 statement that “one person had access” described an earlier, much smaller deployment of two mobile systems and a different meaning of access — not the current authorized-user list for an operational system.

Yes. Every search requires a reason and is logged (user, time, reason, and related fields). It functions as a keystroke-level audit trail. Network searches that touch our cameras are also auditable. Logs are reviewed by the ALPR systems manager and division commanders on a monthly basis, with additional review by command staff and designated analysts. Flock’s audit-assistance tools flag unusual activity.

PSAB continues to have oversight of ALPR use. A written audit report is not routinely provided unless the Board asks for it. Information that was previously provided to the PSAB is now distributed fully to the general public through the Transparency Hub.  The Police Department will report to PSAB as requested and consistent with the Board’s authority. Minutes record what was taken up on the agenda, not every internal review the Department completed.

It is Department policy, aligned with Missouri records schedules in Chapter 109, RSMo, and with the setting in the Flock system. It is not required by a current City ordinance.

Current oversight includes policy, required reasons, permanent logs, monthly command review, vendor audit-assistance flags, CALEA accreditation standards, City legal review of the contract and policy, and Council’s budget authority.

Yes. Cameras capture plate and vehicle characteristics, time, and location. Authorized users can search by plate or by description, receive hotlist alerts, run limited companion-vehicle (“convoy”) queries, and search across networks when sharing is enabled. The system does not use facial recognition and does not identify people by race, gender, or other personal characteristics. A query is not an arrest and is not a search of a person or a vehicle.

Description searches are technically possible using characteristics such as make, model, color, and unique features. Driving a common vehicle does not authorize a traffic stop or a search of the person or the car. A description such as “white SUV” may be used as an investigative filter only when there is already a legitimate case — for example, a reported offense with a time, area, and direction of travel. Even then, a Flock result is a lead. Officers still need independent legal grounds before they stop anyone. A wide search for a common vehicle with no case nexus would not meet our expectations for proper use.

A query of plate-reader records is not the same thing as searching a person or a vehicle. Courts have generally treated license plates and vehicles in public view as having a reduced expectation of privacy. Policy requires an investigative purpose, logging, and human verification before enforcement action. If a court with authority over our operations rules that this kind of query requires a warrant or is otherwise unlawful, we will follow that ruling.

No. Under General Order 200.29, division commanders or their designees approve which personnel may operate ALPR. Each search still requires a reason and is logged. Hotlist alerts must be human-verified before action.

A convoy search identifies vehicles traveling together. It can help locate companions in cases such as retail-theft rings or trafficking. Twenty-five such searches were run when investigators had a need for that capability. Case-specific details may be protected if they relate to open investigations.

The system default has been “all networks selected,” which lets an investigator search available ALPR networks when the location of relevant activity is not yet known. Investigators can narrow the search to specific networks or locations. A nationwide or multi-network lookup generally requires a full plate; it is not a browse of every camera for a vehicle description. That default, and who may use it, is part of the sharing review now underway. Many of our Senior Alerts and Amber Alerts travel outside of the Lee's Summit jurisdiction.  We have recovered some seniors or children as far away as the Canadian border.  I wanted to share this as an example, if needed.

Policy prohibits using ALPR for traffic enforcement as such. “Traffic” and “Traffic Infraction” in the vendor’s dropdowns are not the same thing as writing tickets. Traffic-related searches may be used for DUI, hit-and-run, or other serious traffic-related criminal investigations. The “Traffic Infraction” label was used 109 times between June 27 and July 27. The hotlist labeled “traffic” is an investigator-created list of three plates associated with hit-and-run suspects (two of which were expired as of August 26). That is criminal-investigation work, not general traffic enforcement. We will explore the labeling of offense types so the public log is not misleading. We have the ability to edit the reason list. We have removed "traffic" as an option for approved users to select. 

That text was entered in a free-form field and should have been categorized as “Other” before any public-records release. It was tied to an intelligence report about a car or truck meetup involving vehicles that may have been connected to similar incidents in neighboring cities. We have identified the labeling problem and are working to filter and categorize that kind of entry more accurately in future releases. The free-form field is one of the reasons we paused outside sharing and are pressing the vendor to tighten what can be typed into search fields and avoid public confusion.

These requests often require log exports, cross-referencing against open cases in the records system, and redacting material that remains under investigation. Some asked-for data does not already exist as a record and would have to be created through additional analysis. Each request should be audited against the actual correspondence. If a required date or reason for delay was not provided, that should be acknowledged and corrected. If the statutory process was followed, that should be stated plainly.

Some questions seek data or reports that do not exist as a record. A “no responsive records” answer means the Department did not have a document that matched the request, not that the cameras were unused. When a request would require building a new analysis rather than producing an existing record, that distinction should be explained in the response.

The incident discussed in that public comment did not involve an investigation conducted by the Lee’s Summit Police Department because it was outside of our city limits. We do not have firsthand knowledge of the facts described. Specific investigative details, including whether a particular person was located using ALPR, belong to the investigating agency.