This story has been updated with a statement from the Austin Police Department
The city of Austin's automatic license plate reader program will come to a close at the end of the month.
City Manager T.C. Broadnax announced Tuesday night that City Council will not vote this week on renewing the program. The decision came after several community members and city leaders spoke out against it during a council work session that included Austin Police Department leaders.
“While I appreciate the Austin Police Department’s thorough presentation ... and have confidence that APD can continue to use this tool in a responsible way focused on keeping Austinites safe, I am also sensitive to community concerns and outstanding questions from members of the City Council,” Broadnax said in an email to council members and Mayor Kirk Watson.
He said delaying the vote will give the city more time to address the concerns raised around data privacy.
In 2023, the City Council gave APD permission to pilot a program to use scanners to read license plates. The scanners allow police to run plates through a database to search for certain criminal activity, like stolen vehicles.
The city placed 40 cameras across the city — many of them downtown — and installed nearly 500 cameras on police vehicles to help catch criminals. The city’s contracted with Flock Safety and Axon to run the program.
Risks to vulnerable communities
But residents have expressed concerns about how the data is being maintained and the risks it creates for immigrant communities and those seeking health care prohibited by the state.
Critics said the captured information can be kept and shared with outside agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Texas Attorney General.
Council Member Mike Siegel said the city’s contract with Flock does not protect Austin’s vulnerable communities from mass surveillance, and that is really concerning as immigration and deportation efforts have escalated.
“Austin should not be participating in Trump’s mass surveillance programs,” he said. “We have evidence that ICE is actively collaborating with Flock, and ICE essentially has side door access to Flock’s cameras and data sets and that data is being used to enforce ICE actions.”
A recent article from 404 Media found that ICE has accessed these license plate reader databases to assist with deportations.
Siegel said the data could also be shared with other agencies that track people seeking abortions or gender-affirming care.
Policing tool
The Austin Police Department has maintained that the license plate reader program is helping crack down on crime, citing its ability to assist the department as it faces staffing issues.
“This police department is 300 officers short,” Assistant Police Chief Sheldon Askew said. “We do not have enough officers to do the job that we would prefer to do without the use of technology to supplement [our work].”
Askew said the readers were helping to catch criminals and have led to arrests and justice for many victims across Austin. A recent city audit found that 75 million scans resulted in 165 arrests, 133 prosecutions and one missing person found.
He also said the data is not being used for immigration-related searches or other unauthorized uses. The audit did find that information was not being shared for immigration purposes.
However, recent APD data Askew shared in an email to council members found that between 10%-20% of license plate searches in the database did not include a clear reason or case number, which is not in line with the city resolution allowing the program.
Askew said police department supervisors have been instructed to counsel officers to ensure their use of the technology aligns with the city’s goals and policy.
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said during the work session Tuesday that she believed the city could be good stewards of the program.
“I take this very seriously,” she said. “But I do feel that there is a way to do this and to do it in a way that we can be successful and have a program here as a large city that addresses violent crime. We can do both.”
But she ultimately agreed with Broadnax's decision to postpone the decision to continue the program.
"Listening to the concerns raised by our community members and elected officials has given us an important opportunity to pause and reassess the path forward," Davis said in a written statement. "The use of technology plays a critical role in how cases are solved and removing dangerous criminals from our streets. It is essential for us to responsibly look at ways to expand access to investigative technologies."
She said if the city decided to move forward with the program, she would be open to using a different vendor.
City leaders say the program could come back to council in five to six months. Staff will be looking at contract language, potential costs for the upcoming budget and how to help the police department fill gaps without this technology.
San Marcos is also grappling with the issue. After hours of testimony, the City Council voted early Wednesday to reject a proposal with Flock that would have expanded the city’s program.
