KenCom organizes license plate reader system committee

Local law enforcement officials to draft transparency, oversight guidelines for proposed countywide system

KenCom and police officials discuss a potential map of ALPRs in the county at an ad hoc committee meeting on Jan. 5, 2021. (Lucas Robinson)

The KenCom 911 Dispatch Center has formed an ad hoc committee made up of local law enforcement representatives to hammer out the details for a potential countywide automated license plate reader system.

Officials from KenCom and local police departments met Tuesday, Jan. 5, to discuss security and auditing protocols for the ALPR system, in addition to a public relations statement and the exact placement of the scanners. Two representatives also participated in the meeting from Flock Safety, the ALPR company that will manage the county’s scanner system.

The 911 dispatch center, which provides dispatching service for Kendall County police departments and fire protection districts, has yet to purchase the 10 ALPRs it plans to install along major roads throughout the county.

KenCom Director Lynette Bergeron said officials wanted to form the ALPR committee “so that the public understands why we’re doing it, our objectives for doing [it], and to put them more at ease as to who has access to it and what we’re using it for.”

During the meeting, members selected Gene Morton, an investigator with the Plano Police Department, to chair the committee.

While nothing is finalized, officials discussed a map showing potential locations for the system during the meeting.

According to the map, half the scanners would be in the northeastern corner of Kendall County, along Route 30 near the Boulder Hill subdivision, close to Oswego and Montgomery. Other scanners would be placed near Minooka, Route 34 near Sandwich, Route 47 near Lisbon, Route 71 near Newark and Route 126 near Plainfield.

Although still in its infancy, the ALPR project has angered some Yorkville officials. Mayor John Purcell branded the system mass surveillance at a Yorkville City Council meeting late last year and vowed not to cooperate.

But Yorkville Police Chief Jim Jensen appeared at Tuesday’s committee meeting, taking an active role in discussions over security protocol for the plate scanner system.

Jensen pushed for requiring users of the ALPR to enter a valid reason for a plate search.

“If it’s not filled in, then that agency, or whoever’s doing the audit, has to be accountable for that,” Jensen said.

Although data privacy concerns with ALPRs have existed for decades, materials provided to KenCom by Flock Safety state that the company “never shares, sells or monetizes the data.”

“All data is securely stored in the cloud and deleted automatically every 30 days on a rolling basis,” the company said.

During the meeting, Bergeron pushed the committee to include audit protocols in its security agreement.

“We would want each individual user have to have a login and a password,” Bergeron said. “So that every time they log in, or they do anything, there is an audit trail for everything that we do.”

Although the committee has not decided who will have access to the system at each department, officials voiced support for limiting system access to command staff and investigators.

During the meeting, Flock Safety representatives demonstrated to local law enforcement how license plates can be tracked in the database. Users can search by license plate, vehicle model, date and location. The system also can create and share a daily “hot list” of license plates, notifying users of when the plate is tracked on a roadside scanner.

To search the plates, however, officials want to require users to enter a reason to search for the plates. Bergeron urged the committee to consider requiring “minimum criteria” in order to conduct a plate search.

“There’s got to be a minimum of acts to put in there, whether it be a CAD incident or a report number,” he said.

The next meeting for KenCom ad hoc committee on license plate scanners will be at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 19.