Twelve automated license plate readers (ALPRs) from Flock Safety have been operating in the city since at least the fall of 2024. The police department currently has seven ALPRs affixed to black poles along roadways throughout the city, as well as five movable ones. South Sioux City, Sergeant Bluff, Le Mars and Woodbury County also use ALPRs, which run on solar and battery power.
During its Feb. 2 meeting, the City Council authorized the police department to submit a $77,250 grant application to the State of Iowa Office of Drug Control Policy Byrne — Justice Assistance Grant Program to fund 21 additional ALPRs, which would bring the city's total number to 33.
"As an investigative tool, the strength of it lies on the network," Sioux City Police Capt. Ryan Bertrand told The Journal. "Obviously, the more cameras you have, the more coverage you have. And the more coverage you have, the more results you're able to get."
ALPRs capture high resolution images of the backs of vehicles and license plate data. Locally, police have used Flock's camera network to aid in the apprehension of homicide suspects, search for endangered children and investigate cases of theft.
A report by the University of Iowa's Technology Law Clinic and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa, stated that ALPRs are a "surveillance tool" that poses "serious risks" to residents' privacy and civil liberties. The report, which was released in December, was based on a survey of law enforcement agencies in 48 communities and their use of ALPRs. The Sioux City Police Department was not among the agencies surveyed.
Veronica Fowler, communications director for the ACLU of Iowa, said ALPRs are worse than red-light cameras and speed cameras because of the "massive network" they feed into.
The Sioux City Police Department's Flock subscription allows it to access a national database that thousands of U.S. law enforcement agencies with ALPRs share. Flock's system sends alerts to law enforcement when a vehicle on the "hot list" is detected in the area. Police officers can use their laptops and cellphones to query identifying vehicle features, such as color, make and model.
"The whole, quote unquote, strength of ALPRs is that they basically are inserted into a community, paid for by the very people they're surveilling, and tons of information about those people's whereabouts is dumped into a giant database that thousands of people have access to," Fowler said. "And right now, in the state of Iowa, there are very, very few guardrails on these."
Images captured by ALPRs are kept in a secure cloud server and then deleted after 30 days, along with accompanying data, according to Bertrand. However, the images can be copied and retained longer by police to use in ongoing investigations.
"I think there's kind of a misnomer out there that the technology is overly intrusive, and it's like super powerful and super invasive. Really, what it's doing is it's just giving us investigative leads," Bertrand said. "We still have to do our job. We still have to run it down. There's still police work to follow it. These aren't slam dunks."
Bertrand said Sioux City officers used Flock's technology in a child exploitation case, which he described as "very chilling and very upsetting." During that investigation, he said the parent, who was also the suspect, made an attempt to evade Child Protective Services. Police entered the suspect's license plate number into the ALPR system and located the vehicle.
"A traffic stop was able to be executed on it, and the children were returned to protective custody before anything bad happened," Bertrand said.
Fowler said media reports show the many ways ALPRs can be abused, including officers using the network to track former romantic partners. She also pointed to an incident where the Johnson County, Texas, sheriff obtained ALPR data from Mount Prospect, Illinois, in effort to locate a woman who had an abortion.
"Those things give pause. Those things give concern. You can basically, right now, do a search on anyone for almost any reason, unless you have strict policies in place," Fowler said. "It is the wild, wild west with the use of these things."
'Under deployed'
Last month, Mayor Bob Scott was the lone Sioux City council member to vote against the police department's most recent grant application to fund additional ALPRs.
"My friends on the very right and my friends on the very left, and I'm kind of in the middle, both have a problem with this technology. I can't ignore that," he said.
Citizens around the country have expressed privacy and data security worries about ALPRs, as well as concerns over reports that federal agencies have accessed local data for immigration enforcement activities. Public backlash has even led some municipalities and counties to cut ties with Flock, including Coralville, Iowa; Denver, Colorado; Santa Clara County, California; South Tucson, Arizona; Verona, Wisconsin; and Ithaca, New York.
Flock stated in a blog post on its website that every customer has "complete control over their sharing relationships" and the company "never shares customer data without their knowledge or permission."
"If agencies choose to collaborate with federal agencies, that is wholly up to them. Flock never enrolls agencies in automatic data sharing, and sharing relationships can be revoked at any time," Flock said in the Oct. 22 post in response to a report that Washington state data had been exposed to immigration enforcement.
Scott also took issue with the city having to "come up with the money" to cover the ongoing cost of a Flock ALPR subscription. The grant, if awarded, would only cover the cost of new ALPR installation, maintenance, data storage and access to the national Flock database for a single year.
Bertrand told The Journal he expects the recurring annual cost of roughly 33 ALPRs to be just over $100,000. But he said there is a "tremendous savings" when Flock's system helps investigators catch a suspect on day one, rather than day 10.
If the police department is awarded the grant, would the city stop at nearly three dozen cameras, or would leaders seek even more funding for ALPRs in the future?
When it comes to the cameras, Bertrand believes Sioux City is "under deployed." He said around 100 ALPRs "could really cover a lot of the town."
The ACLU of Iowa's report listed the Cedar Rapids Police Department as having the largest number of ALPRs (76) of the nearly 50 communities surveyed. Ames and Glenwood have the fewest (1). Some law enforcement agencies declined to share how many cameras they have.
"What would be enough? Obviously, you've got to balance effectiveness against fiscal responsibility," Bertrand said. "I'd say we're under deployed in comparison to what other agencies our size are doing."
On Feb. 23, the council heard a presentation from Flock representatives about the vendor's "Safe City" platform, a long-term subscription that goes beyond ALPRs. The suite of public safety technology includes gunshot and car crash detection, mobile security trailers and a thermal camera-equipped drone that launches automatically when 911 calls come in.
Bertrand told the council the police department has been "very conservative" in its deployment and usage of Flock's technology. He said Sergeant Bluff is set to become a Flock "Safe City" in the spring.
"They're going to surpass us in every measure of capability," he said of Sioux City's neighbor to the south.
The council has not been asked to take action on a "Safe City" contract.
Regulations proposed
Last month, Iowa lawmakers advanced a bill to regulate ALPRs. House File 2161, as introduced, would require city councils and county boards to adopt a local ordinance to use the technology.
The bill would also prohibit accessing a license plate image and accompanying data more than 24 hours after an ALPR had captured it, unless a judge had issued a search warrant or a county attorney a subpoena. Other limited exceptions would include lost or stolen vehicles, amber alerts and investigations related to human trafficking. Anyone who violates the 30-day deletion requirement for license plate images and data would be guilty of a simple misdemeanor.
Bertrand said he doesn't think the average person has anything to worry about when it comes to ALPRs and stressed the cameras are a "tool for investigators" to solve cases much faster.
"This is not really the thing I think people should have concerns about if they've got privacy concerns. I think their cellphone is doing far more monitoring than anything else," he said.
Fowler said people have the option to leave their phones at home and adjust privacy settings, which isn't the case with ALPRs.
"If law enforcement wants to use phones to track you, they have to go to a judge and get a warrant and show that they have a good reason for it," she said.
Iowa District 1 House Rep. J.D. Scholten, D-Sioux City, said he's heard more about ALPRs from constituents concerned about their privacy and Fourth Amendment rights than he has from law enforcement.
"My hope is that we get a bill that includes guardrails around data access, data sharing, and data retention, along with accountability for any bad actors," said Scholten, who said his understanding is that potential amendments could change the bill dramatically. "I still think there's a will to find a compromise between freedom limiting surveillance and public safety."
If the legislation, as proposed, is enacted, Bertrand said he thinks it will "hamper the effectiveness of the tool."
Fowler said the ACLU of Iowa would be happy to see some restrictions on the books concerning ALPRs, but she said the nonprofit civil rights organization would rather have communities in the state not using the cameras at all.
Auditing usage
Over a recent 30-day period, Sioux City officers conducted 1,425 searches of the department's ALPR data. Every query is logged.
After signing into Flock's system with multi-factor authentication, authorized users must enter a purpose for their search. When a case number is available, Bertrand said officers are told to record that, too. They can select a time frame to search, enter the suspect vehicle's license plate number or select identifying characteristics of the vehicle.
"You see a rear shot of the vehicle and the license plate — the same you would see in the public, nothing more powerful of a tool than you'd have with your naked eye if you're standing on the side of the street and this car went by," Bertrand explained of what a query returns.
Sometimes, Bertrand acknowledged, the system can make errors. It might mistake a zero on a license plate for the letter "D" or the letter "I" for the letter "L."
"Nobody's going to take action merely on a Flock hit, or a Flock alert, or any kind of response. We don't put full stock in this. We don't trust it automatically," he said. "We verify, verify, verify."
Currently, Bertrand said the department's policy calls for a quarterly audit of the system. However, if an allegation of improper use is made, he said an investigator could examine information about every query. Any officer who misuses the ALPR system would be guilty of a class I violation, which Bertrand said could result in termination.
"We are very responsible with the tools we do have. We don't take it lightly. Public trust is huge," he said.
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