BY CHRIS LUCHINI
Candidate for Los Alamos County Council
https://losalamosreporter.com/2026/09/18/lte-endorsing-use-of-alprs-to-make-our-community-safer/
https://losalamosreporter.com/2026/09/18/lte-thank-you-mr-izraelevitz-for-your-candor/
After reading Mr Izraelevitz’s letter praising Automated License Plate Readers and the surveillance state they empower, and Mr Rickman’s trenchant response, I decided to sleep on my letter before submitting it.
I find that I can’t match Mr Rickman’s clarity and brevity on the root of the problem on this topic, so I will attempt another approach: What are the costs versus the benefits of the addition of LPR’s Los Alamos County.
There are three types of surveillance cameras that are getting lumped together in the discourse; License Plate Readers, Speed Cameras, and (not yet existent in LA County) stop light cameras.
The current LPR system is costing the County about $0.5M per year. Commander Ross stated that in August, by his own audit of the system, there were 8 searches conducted, related to both crime and traffic accidents. If that rate of usage is reflective of the annual rate, then those searches are costing $5000/each. Are those 8 searches related to felony or misdemeanor crimes or just traffic accidents? We don’t yet know. Was the LPR system instrumental in investigating those crimes? We don’t yet know. Is the financial cost worth the benefit? We don’t know the benefit side, so no decision can be made.
LPR systems have vast potential for misuse, and absolutely expand the surveillance state. Reducing the retention time for the LPR records from 120 to 90 days does little to reduce the civil liberties risk. Many jurisdictions have reduced their retention time to 30 days or less. I would guess that records between 60 and 90 days old do little to nothing to help solve crime. I welcome a rebuttal based on data within Los Alamos County.
Commander Ross stated it took him 1-2 hours to review the 8 searches conducted in August. If that is typical, then 100% audits should be routine, and I would suggest a committee of Commander Ross and two rotating members of the County Council review these searches on a monthly or quarterly basis. A public record of the number of searches, their nature and the false positive rate should be publicly published on a regular basis.
Mr Izraelevitz’s reductio ad absurdum comments on auditing the auditors is specious: asserting that since we can’t have an infinite chain of auditors, that auditing is pointless deserves ridicule.
I will grant that LPRs mounted on police cars are a matter of officer safety during traffic stops. I would like to know if the LAPD has a policy regarding officers cruising private parking lots to use the LPRs to search parked cars?
Stop Light Cameras (SLC) do not yet exist in Los Alamos County. Mr Izraelevitz states a 25-30% reduction in injury accidents due to SLC use. Intersection injury accidents account for roughly 37% of all traffic injury accidents. The raw math, along with the fact that these cameras are not recording all activity, but are triggered by violations of traffic laws, make this category of cameras a simpler issue. The costs are financial, with little to no privacy or societal cost, and the benefits are a significant reduction in injury accidents. If elected to the County Council, I would likely be pre-disposed to vote for installation of these cameras in the county, if a case can be made that particular intersections have accident rates that warrant their installation.
The justification for Speed Cameras stated by Chief Sgambellone is that it is in reaction to the number of fatal accidents during rush hour. He then noted that these accidents were due to distracted driving, and not speed. Neither the accident that resulted in the deaths of McMillan or Leonard were related to speed, both of those involved vehicles crossing into oncoming traffic. The $2.1 million being spent on fixed location speed cameras is not going to in any way address the root cause of distracted (PUT DOWN YOUR @#%$@$% PHONE!) driving and the lack of divided highways on the major commuting routes.
Red light cameras are automated violation/citation generating machines. The private company that administers the cameras will be processing these alleged violations, and those citations will be sent to the owner of the vehicle. That is unless facial recognition is used to attempt to identify the driver. The mechanism for issuing citations are well understood to have significant potential for civil liberties violations.
The cost to put concrete dividers along the main hill road from the Y to Camino Entrada would be about $1M. Similarly the Truck Route would cost roughly $2.5M to divide with concrete barriers. (The Main Hill road would likely cost significantly more for required road upgrades.) These would be one time costs, unlike the ongoing expense of red light camera contracts. That $2.1M would go a long way to actually preventing future deaths, if it were used for actual solutions.
Fixed speed cameras become known to drivers, and will only suppress speeds in their immediate area. Chief Sgambellone noted in his remarks that he would have preferred mobile speed trailers for this very reason. So why are we spending money on a system that will not solve the actual problem, costs significant money, and have significant civil liberties issues?
If elected to County Council, I would vote against installation of fixed speed cameras, but would vote for a limited number of mobile speed cameras that can be deployed to problem areas.