Waltham Police Department releases new automatic license plate recognition policy

The Waltham Police Department released a new policy addressing automatic license plate recognition technology usage.

The ALPR policy states that there will be an “ALPR administrator” who is responsible for auditing usage of the information collected from ALPR cameras. Detective Capt. Timothy Maher is the current ALPR administrator. In an interview with The Waltham Times, Maher stated that a monthly auditing process will take place in which every inquiry made to WPD’s internal ALPR information portal will be reviewed.

There are several parameters that officers have to adhere to in order to get information from the portal. These include an incident number, a reason for requesting the information and a license plate number. These parameters are intended to ensure that officers are doing the right thing, he said, and will be reviewed in the audit to make sure that everything checks out. Maher also noted that in addition to the monthly audit, inquiries are reviewed on a rolling basis. 

According to the ALPR policy, information retrieved by inquiries may not be used for an officer’s personal reasons, to harass someone or to aid immigration enforcement. WPD has opted out of uploading data to a national ALPR database, and all data collected by ALPR systems will be deleted after 30 days unless it is relevant to an investigation. All officers that use the database as well as the ALPR administrator will be trained by an ALPR system representative as is required by the policy.

The internal ALPR portal utilizes a hotlist feature. A detective can add a license plate to the hotlist, and the system will send the detective a notification if the license plate is picked up on cameras within the city or shared network of cameras between WPD and other police departments in the state. 

To standardize policy around ALPR systems, WPD is working on a memorandum of understanding to which all the departments they share information with will adhere. Inquiries made by other police departments aren’t visible on the Waltham internal ALPR information portal. Maher said that if any other departments were to use Waltham data in a way that wasn’t approved, he would be able to revoke their access. 

In addition to the ALPR policy, WPD has also created a Flock Safety transparency portal. A complete list of departments that WPD shares information with is listed on the transparency portal, and it will be kept up to date if departments are added to the list. The webpage includes information on what kind of information Flock cameras in the city are picking up, the number of Flock cameras in the city, prohibited uses for Flock data and policies surrounding data storage, data retention and access. 

Maher encourages citizens to “keep an eye on the portal” and said that success stories with cases using Flock data will be uploaded to the portal as soon as those investigations are closed and information can be shared.