LICENSE PLATE READERS ALL OVER CHARLOTTE, NO PUBLIC DEBATE, NO PUBLIC POLICY

SMILE, AMERICA.

Come to Charlotte for the Democratic National Convention in September, 2012, and you’ll likely be caught on many surveillance cameras, Department of Transportation cameras, and License Plate Readers mushrooming all over the City.

Total spending on all surveillance cameras, monitors, processors, data storage, IT personnel, maintenance, police and other personnel to operate the equipment, legal costs, and other costs are unknown at this time.  CMPD reports a “new $1.73 million video observation center” in addition to a new multi-agency Command Center similarly outfitted with surveillance and communication equipment.

Car-mounted reader like CMPD uses

Most recently though, Charlotte’s City Council approved $209,268 of Asset Forfeiture spending for License Plate Readers on March 26, 2012. 

Then on Monday, May 14, 2012, Council approved another $606,871 to be spent against a Federal USAI (Urban Area Security Initiative Grant) Grant to purchase automated license plate readers and related equipment from an existing unit price contract with NDI Recognition Systems as well. That contract was approved by City Council on June 9, 2008 and was for an initial three-year term with two additional one-year terms.  That money will be spent on:

·        Five automated license plate processors

·        37 cameras and cables

·        Related equipment

·        Installation

·        Maintenance

·        Site licensing

The new equipment enables CMPD to expand its use of automated license plate readers throughout the city.

The city’s explanation for the AF purchase includes:  Staff Resource: Harold Medlock, Police

  CMPD began using automated license plate readers in 2008 to capture license plate information and vehicle descriptions. The data is used for comparison against stolen or wanted vehicle alerts listed with the National Crime Information Center. The data has proven to be a useful investigative and predictive tool for police.

  Police want to appropriate $209,268 in assets forfeiture funds to purchase four mobile automated license plate readers and two portable “rapid deployment” automated license plate reader systems. These devices are an extension of the automated license plate reader system now being used in four CMPD patrol vehicles. The new technology provides more flexibility in deployment of the license plate readers.

Wording of “and predictive tool” indicates police will use stored data.  If they only stored data of known criminal activity, there wouldn’t be cause for concern.  However, the Automated License Plate Readers, called ALPR’s or just LPR’s, read and take in enormous amounts of data about the travels and associations of innocent citizens.

There was not one minute of public debate, information, or question in advance of these “consent” items to purchase and install surveillance equipment all over the city with absolutely no controls on their use.

There has been no mention in any network news or paper to be found about the installation of these stationary and mounted cameras all over Charlotte, collecting and storing millions of records of travel data of Charlotte’s citizens and visitors.

COSTS

The other interesting note in the city’s explanation for purchase is “The data ‘has proven’ to be a useful investigative and predictive tool for police.”   What use has there been to justify spending this money, nearly a million dollars, plus all the money dating back to 2008 on LPR’s?

May the citizens of Charlotte see this proof that is offered and discuss if it’s the best use of police funds?  Maybe the money could have accomplished the same license benefits and also hired more officers, provided wider training, better safety equipment for officers, raises, or some other good use.  It’s a lot of money.

WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH OUR DATA?

If you read this previous citynewswatch post, you saw that the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for mobile LPR operation is dated 4/29/11 and was only available by searching through a research institution’s web site.  This SOP for car-mounted LPR’s is not located on Charmeck.org in the same area as all other (known) SOP’s. 

There is no known SOP to cover stationary, mounted LPR camera units at all.  Since we are about to purchase at least 5 additional processors along with 37 cameras, you can bet CMPD is planning on collecting lots more citizen records, but they haven’t even proposed what they want to do with them.  No one has asked for any public input, debate or permission—except that City Council has already approved the purchase offline.

There should be debate about whether to store ANY data, and if so, for how long.  Any information not related to a criminal investigation should not be stored and should not be shared.  The car-mounted LPR SOP contains instructions that all records collected will be stored for at least 18 months, which is much too long.

Mounting the units in particular areas brings about yet a new dimension to privacy concerns because the police/government would then be choosing to target certain populations for monitoring and data collection.  If you happen to drive past one of these targeted area cameras frequently, your information will be accumulated faster than that of others.

CITYNEWSWATCH EXPOSED LPR PLANS, CMPD WENT ON PR CAMPAIGN

After citynewswatch exposed plans to purchase and install more cameras just before the very quiet City Council funding actions noted above, CMPD seemed to be on a PR campaign to tell us how much we need the LPR’s and how great they are.  They fed certain limited information to a local television station claiming the cameras were brand new and were being used because of a tremendous spike noticed the prior month in license plate thefts, especially in the North Tryon Division. 

However, no crime statistics were given for the report.  CMPD crime stats found elsewhere are not consistent with that statement.  It would be ludicrous to think they noticed a spike, put out and evaluated competitive bids, then installed and trained on new equipment within a month of “noticing a huge spike in license plate thefts” anyway.

And there is certainly information contradicting the “newness” of the cameras:

The PR campaign continues as CMPD Spokesman Robert Tufano sent out an invitation May 7, 2012.  It read in part:

On Tuesday, May 8, 2012, members with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s Auto Theft Unit will unveil the latest vehicle and tag reader donated to the CMPD by Nationwide Insurance. Nationwide Insurance has been a partner in our crime fighting efforts and this is the seventh vehicle Nationwide has donated to the CMPD over the last four years.

The donated vehicle and equipment will be critical tools that will assist our detectives in reducing the number of auto thefts in our community. Please join us on Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. in front of the Police Training Academy located at 1770 Shopton Road.

For additional information please contact Sgt. Rich Tonsberg at 704.336.2292.

CMPD really wants us to focus on car thefts and license plate thefts. 

PRIVATE COMPANIES SUPPLIED RECORDS BY LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENTS

In many jurisdictions, police collect our data and then upload it to a private company database where it is stored indefinitely, as well as used and shared without proper or agreed-upon restriction. 

This turns the government into an actor in the transaction with the private company obtaining our data and invading our privacy.  This is where Fourth Amendment concerns become most acute.  As you may have read in the last post on this topic, even when there was no agreement for this data upload to occur from police to private company, it has happened such as in Washington, D.C.

Many argue “license plates are property of the government and roads are public.”  Well, that’s true but not the correct point.  Creating a dossier of your activity—tracking your comings and goings—is not the business the government should be permitted to do for innocent citizens with no probable cause to believe you are involved in criminal activity. 


It’s not the mere observation, it’s the accumulation of data by state actors—compounded often by giving that information to a private company—that’s a problem.

The circumstances that would allow surveillance of this type or specific searches and seizures of people suspected of committing crimes require Law Enforcement Officers to SWEAR AN OATH of PROBABLE CAUSE in order to obtain a WARRANT for that activity.

Innocent people (and we are all presumed innocent) walking or driving around our home city or visiting another have the right to do that in privacy which includes relative anonymity.

EXAMPLES OF RECORDS CREATED

Vigilant Video is a private company who is compiling a massive private, national database called National Vehicle Location Service (NVLS), mostly filled with records supplied by Law Enforcement Agencies around the country—sometimes without permission—and storing them in their own, unregulated databases permanently.  Here’s how it works direct from a Vigilant Video presentation to Law Enforcement found in full here.

According to Vigilant Video,

40% of US Vehicle License Plates are Scanned Yearly.

Published reports state there are well

in excess of half a billion records in Vigilant’s database.

Page 2 includes emblems from interested parties such as the Richmond Police Department, Rodney Monroe’s old Stomping Ground, the Dept. of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and a number of finance companies:

Page 7 shows how extensive the information contained on an LPR RECORD is:  The scan takes in the license plate, records the driver’s location, date & time of scan.  This record collection happens whether or not the driver is a wanted criminal or suspected of criminal activity.  Most of the records created are of innocent drivers. 

Page 6 explains that data comes from UPLOADS from Law Enforcement

Page 9 shows how stationary mounted readers and readers in police cars gather data which is collected in a massive warehousing at a private company, Vigilant Video.

OFFICERS, LPR’s, and the CONSTITUTION

Most officers are being given the same line as the public is now fed: these are just efficient electronic checks for illegal behavior, such as stolen cars and plates.

Most officers, if asked to follow innocent citizens and record their movements for a year and a half with no probable cause to believe they are involved in criminal activity, would refuse that unconstitutional order.  They would also ask “why?”  

Just because it’s electronic eyes instead of human eyes, with data fed to an electronic data storage mechanism instead of an officer’s notebook, that doesn’t mean the Constitution should fly out the window.

Are officers who are being asked to feed data into the system unaware that’s what is happening?  Are they solely focused on the instantaneous check, ignoring the year and a half of data collection & storage?  By purchasing and using the LPR’s in the way designed by CMPD Policy, that is exactly what is going on. 

CMPD Forced to Tell the Truth by “Whistleblower” and Tragedy

Police arrested 31-year-old Lavatae Evans Thursday just after 12 p.m. on December 15^th, 2011 in a S.W.A.T. raid at his mother’s home on Brewton Drive for crimes they say he committed at two locations with three women on the same morning. 

Evans has now been charged with 5 counts of First Degree Sex Offense, one count of Armed Robbery, two counts 2^nd Degree Kidnapping, and Possession of a Stolen Firearm for actions allegedly taken early in the morning of December 15^th against two women at the Sunset Inn on Equipment Drive for an incident recorded at 5:52 a.m. 

They also charged him with another 1^st Degree Sex Offense, 1^st Degree Kidnapping, Assault on a Female, and Assault with a Deadly Weapon for actions police say he took just after they told him to leave his voluntary discussion about the first set of crimes.  The S.W.A.T. take down after a three-hour standoff was 12:07 p.m.

That’s not what police told the public until they were forced to tell the truth.

At first, police had reported Evans had committed a sexual assault, kidnapping, and other crimes “while they were looking for” him on charges for sexual assaults on two other women earlier the same morning at a hotel on Equipment Drive.  But that turned out not to be quite true.

Police already knew where Evans was because they had him at the police station and told him to go before collecting evidence readily available to them.  More accurately, they had a non-custodial, voluntary chat with him while the two alleged victims of numerous felony counts police were supposed to investigate were at the hospital being checked out. 

CrimeinCharlotte.com reports that Evans’ record includes priors for convictions of drug possession and second-degree kidnapping. Evans was arrested in connection with a 1997 incident and charged with first-degree rape of a child, first-degree sex offense against a child, kidnapping and robbery. The rape and kidnapping charges were dismissed, records show, but he was convicted on the robbery charge. For the sex offense charge, he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge: Felony Crime Against Nature.

Multiple news outlets, including WSOCTV report Evans has been arrested seven times on numerous charges in the past year-and-a-half, which can be confirmed on the Sheriff’s web site.

The Charlotte Observer reported police said “Foster said that as a result of the inconsistent statements, police didn't have sufficient evidence to charge Evans while he was at the Law Enforcement Center. She said investigators can't rely only on a victim pointing out a suspect to make an arrest.”

UPDATE WITH LINK /STORY DETAIL CORRECTION

Here’s one of numerous problems with CMPD’s performance:  WSOCTV’s Natalie Pasquarella interviewed one of the victims in the alleged assault from the first location.  The woman told Pasquarella she had thought she might be killed—that Evans had threatened the two women with a gun and she had been forced to run half-dressed out of the hotel room to get away from him.  WSOC Team Reporter Linzi Sheldon had tried to obtain a copy of the surveillance tape from the hotel, but the hotel employee said he needed to keep it for police evidence.  See their team report here.  This occurred AFTER the voluntary discussion, AFTER he was released for supposed insufficient evidence to arrest on charges for the first two women, AFTER Evans allegedly kidnapped and forced oral sex on another woman in his mother’s home, caused a S.W.A.T. raid and standoff that ended in his arrest.  The hotel still seemed to have the video during Sheldon’s report in the afternoon.  Not the police.

And if a man with Evans’ record of charges for First-Degree Rape of a Child, First-Degree Sex Offense Against a Child, Kidnapping and Robbery and Felony Crime Against Nature is found hiding in a neighboring hotel room after two women run partially-clothed from their room to get away from him and a gun, you should probably keep him there at least as long as he is willing to stay.  You should probably at least ask him if he is willing to stay as long as it takes you to fetch the hotel security video and take a look.  You should probably at least ask why he was hiding in another room—which would be on the video as well. 

And you really shouldn’t lie about what you did after another woman is kidnapped and sexually assaulted once you let him go (allegedly).

At a CMPD press conference December 16^th, Major Vicki Foster admitted,

“We allowed him to leave. He did not ask to leave.”

The press conference was also attended by Chief Rodney Monroe, Deputy Chief Harold Medlock, Deputy Chief Katrina Graue, Deputy Chief Kerr Putney and others, who didn’t have anything to say.  Foster also said, “He was here voluntarily and therefore he was free to leave and he could leave any time.”

You can see parts of the CMPD press conference and a partial statement from one of the women from the Sunset Inn at this WSOCTV report.  She says “I pointed to him and I thought they took him off to jail. I don’t why would they release somebody like that?”

Someone anonymously alerted the media that the CMPD story claiming they were “looking for” Evans while he allegedly committed yet another kidnap and sexual assault was completely false.  Here is the content of the letter:

To whom ever will listen,

The information you have received from CMPD concerning the arrest and actions of Lavantae Evans is not completely true.  They have lied in an effort to cover up their mistakes which lead to an innocent person being sexually assaulted and held against her will.  Police responded to the Sunset Inn at 5301 Equipment Dr around 6 a.m. on 12/15/2011.  During this altercation Evans was named and positively identified as a suspect in the kidnapping and rape of two female subjects.  Evans was found hiding in another hotel room a few doors down from where the assault took place.  Once Evans was located he was positively identified as the person who raped and kidnapped the two women. He was then voluntarily transported to the Law Enforcement Center to be questioned by detectives.  At some point Evans was allowed to leave police custody and not charged with the rape and kidnapping of the first two women.  After being allowed to leave police custody he then kidnapped and raped another woman which led to the police standoff with the SWAT team responding. It was only after Evans was involved in the raping and kidnapping of third woman that detectives went and obtained warrants for his arrest for the first two women that he assaulted.  CMPD completely failed in this incident and allowed a dangerous, violent and disturbed individual to walk the streets and a few hours later lead to the rape of another woman that could have been completely prevented.  Please, I implore you to dig harder and see that the information released to you by CMPD is not true in its entirety. All that I have said is documented and available for public record. Please look more into this story and report the truth about what happened with Mr. Evans and CMPD's failure to protect this community.

Thank goodness someone brought this to the attention of the public in a way that couldn’t completely be covered up internally.  There’s too much of that activity going on in the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department and Charlotte Citizens are paying for it—literally and figuratively.  Lives and lawsuits are at stake.  Both are stacking up.  Mayor Foxx and the City Council continue to ignore the problems, refusing completely to address issues brought to them, and in fact giving a raise to City Manager Curt Walton in the midst of his management of the Police Department with Police Chief Rodney Monroe firmly at the helm.

Thank you to the writer of the letter about this horrible situation.  Please continue writing.

Thank you to all those who have written to citynewswatch.  Please continue to bring issues forward.