BY CHRIS LUCHINI
Candidate for Los Alamos County Council

• What is the daily number of license plates processed by the existing LRP?
• How many queries of the data are done per day/week/month? 
• What are the ‘wins’? A detailed list of incidents:
  • That were used as a justification of a ALPR data set query
  • That an ALPR query produced information useful for that investigation. 
  • The data should  be broken down per officer (anonymized is fine). Are some officers generating a larger fraction of queries that don’t result in useful information vs other officers. 
• What is the audit rate: what percentage of ALPR data set queries are audited? Have there been any audits that have found misuse or unjustified use of the ALPR data?
• What is the annualized cost of the ALPR system going forward with Axon? What was the cost for the previous ALPR system?

Public safety is a goal that a all residents of this county support. The justification for the Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR) has been public safety, and while that is a worthy goal, what is missing from that equation is the cost. The cost is not just financial, the cost is also measured in loss of privacy, and the perception of the increase in an ever present surveillance state.

What is the cost of the new Axon system on a yearly basis, and what incremental costs are in the contract? What is the cost per ALPR data record and the cost per ‘good outcome’.

Is there a benefit of these ALPR  in this community? Chief Sgambellone mentioned an incident where a person with dementia drove out of the county and was located with the aid of the ALPR system. A systematic listing of the benefits of these systems is needed, a single anecdote, while heartwarming, is not sufficient evidence of a worthwhile benefit. 

I hope that the presentation on Aug 27 will address these questions, and provide answers in detail.