Attorney General Chris Carr recently announced that he is leading a 19-state coalition in fighting to preserve access to automatic license-plate readers (ALPRs), a critical law enforcement tool that has helped to solve murders, kidnappings, and armed robberies.
AG Carr made a case as to why law enforcement needs access to ALPRs, saying that they have been extremely helpful in apprehending some of society’s worst offenders, and to deny law enforcement permission to use them is negligence.
“The evidence is clear – automatic license-plate readers help to capture some of society’s most violent criminals, who have no business being out on the streets,” Carr argued. “We have a basic duty to keep our states and our communities safe. We must provide law enforcement with the tools they need, and the record of success with this critical technology is exemplary.”
The Brief
In a brief filed in Shannon Schemel et al. v. City of Marco Island, Florida, the attorneys general argued that state and local governments are permitted to use technology to ensure public safety.
This includes ALPRs, which enable law enforcement to coordinate across the county in the apprehension of criminals and the recovery of victims.
More than 20 states, including Georgia, have enacted statutes regulating law enforcement’s use of ALPRs, and the brief lists several examples in which this data has proven essential to criminal investigations.
However, with this suit, individuals are attempting to declare the use of this technology unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.
More than two dozen district courts have previously rejected similar challenges, and the attorneys general have asked the Eleventh Circuit to do the same.
“If courts strip law enforcement of this valuable crime-fighting tool, our streets will be more dangerous, our investigations less effective, our criminals emboldened, and our people less safe. Nothing in the Constitution requires that chilling result,” the AGs argued.
Attorneys general from the following states have joined in signing this Georgia-led brief: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
