Technology to photograph and read your car’s license plate isn’t new, but laws for how Virginia law enforcement agencies use that tech may be after the 2025 legislative session.
They’re called automated license plate readers, or ALPRs. They’re high-speed, high-tech camera systems that not only take a picture of your car’s license plate, but they also collect and store data from those photos. Charlottesville Police Chief Michael Kochis said they can help.
“They’ve been in place now in Charlottesville for about two months and almost immediately we’ve started to see results,” Kochis said during a recent meeting of the Virginia State Crime Commission. He said his locality's use of ALPRs has helped other localities try and find offenders, and after the meeting he said they'd led to more than 10 "successes."
The committee had just heard a presentation about ALPRs – which detailed how and for how long the data is stored and who can access it.
This long-term data collection of people who haven’t committed crimes raised eyebrows for civil rights advocates like Ruby Cherian with the Legal Aid Justice Center.
“These decisions we’re making not only set the parameters of ALPRs, but the parameters for the future of mass surveillance in the Commonwealth,” she told the committee.
Cherian said Norfolk’s use of over 170 ALPRs is already facing legal challenges.
Floyd-area Delegate Wren Williams said it’s easy to view such systems as “big brother overwatch,” but he also noted many Virginia localities are already using them without guardrails from the legislature.
“The horse is out of the barn, and so I think we have to get our hands around it, our arms around it right now,” he told Radio IQ.
An effort to add new regulations to ALPRs was pulled from the docket during the 2024 session, but Delegate Charniele Herring said she hopes to bring it back in January.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
