City Council delays vote on police dash-cam contract

City Council voted unanimously to postpone voting on a three-year, $3.8 million contract to update the Austin Police Department’s fleet of dashboard cameras, citing concerns about the vendor’s built-in automated license plate reader, or ALPR, technology. 

“There’s lots of things we do that have some risk, and there’s some risk in this (delay), but it’s not an unacceptable risk,” interim City Manager Jesús Garza said ahead of the vote during a Council meeting last Thursday. 

Council will revisit the contract – which entails purchasing Axon Fleet 3 dashboard cameras and includes seven optional one-year extensions, for a total potential cost of $17.5 million – by April 20. Along with ALPR technology, the devices offer livestreaming and live maps, a dual-view camera, wireless activation, and connectivity with Axon body cameras, according to a backup document included with the agenda item.

ALPRs use cameras mounted on vehicles or street poles to take photos of license plates, which are then converted into searchable data, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 

Council canceled APD’s contracts for license plate readers during the 2020-21 budget process, which reduced the department’s budget by $31.5 million, as the Austin Monitor previously reported. The cuts stemmed from mass protests against police brutality and racial injustice during the summer of 2020.

Council then voted last September to direct city management to identify roughly $115,000 in funding to reinstate APD’s license plate reader program – with around 20 cameras – and to update related APD policy, including hosting community input sessions.

APD Lt. Sheldon Askew told Council that the contract would allow the department to update 450 dashboard cameras with the latest technology. 

“Every year, the police department purchases approximately a hundred vehicles,” he said. “So when those new vehicles come to the police department, we have to equip those vehicles, and part of that equipment is, of course, the in-car camera systems themselves.” 

But Askew also confirmed that APD has not yet finalized its policy related to license plate readers. 

“We, the police department, are not planning to turn that (ALPR) feature on at this point because we recognize the fact that the Council has set forth in the resolution … the requirements that we have got to abide by,” he said. 

This proved to be an issue for some, on and off the dais.

Chris Harris, president of Equity Action and policy director of the Austin Justice Coalition, called on Council during the public portion of the meeting to postpone voting on the contract.

“In the absence of a policy governing the use of this technology – again, technology that you heard from many people in this community … back in September (who) had a lot of concerns about (it) – it would be foolhardy to approve this at this juncture,” he said. “At minimum, you all should wait until you have the policy in front of you that’s going to govern how this new technology is used before you approve a $17 million contract.” 

Criminal justice reform advocates and members of other organizations dedicated to protecting civil liberties have long opposed ALPRs, which they say infringe on residents’ privacy, are ripe for misuse and disproportionately impact communities of color. 

Kevin Welch, board president of EFF-Austin, touched on the concerns during the public comment period. 

“It’s a complex issue, and I encourage you to postpone and gather more data and evidence, especially because Axon sends the data to evidence.com … which means all the risks around prosecution for abortion, immigration status and gender-affirming care we all discussed last year are very present,” he said. 

Axon’s evidence.com is a cloud service where its customers from law enforcement agencies can store and share video footage from the company’s dashboard cameras and body cameras.

District 9 Council Member Zo Qadri raised the issue of whether other law enforcement agencies – such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Texas Department of Public Safety – might gain access to APD’s ALPR data through the database. Askew said APD would have to authorize the sharing of such data. 

APD shared at least 39 license plate reader reports with ICE between 2019 and 2020, according to a 2020 report on police surveillance by Grassroots Leadership, Just Futures Law and Mijente. 

Citing such concerns, Qadri successfully motioned for a postponement, to make sure the contract “is compliant fully and properly with last year’s resolution” and to allow for community members to weigh in.

“It’s very important to take in public feedback,” he said.

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Photo by Mbranco2, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.