Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk had much to say at the county commission meeting Tuesday regarding license plate reader (LPR) technology, restrictions on data accessibility as well as data protection, and how the county will move forward with Governor Ron DeSantis’ direction.
At the meeting, he confirmed the removal of 72 LPR’s, mobile and fixed, from state road rights of way in the county.
The removal comes after the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), under the direction of the governor, ordered the removal of fixed or mobile LPR’s from state rights-of-way.
“We’re probably going to have to do it on our own because so many in Florida want them down, but we will be in compliance with the 30-day rule,” Rambosk said.
Rambosk said that he and the sheriff’s office will continue to monitor changes in LPR use policy and hopes the county’s policy can be a roadmap for state legislation.
The cameras, made by Flock Safety and other companies, use artificial intelligence to track suspects and flag speeders. But reports of abuse by police in Florida and around the country have sparked a bipartisan push to rethink their use.
Primarily, he stressed how license plate readers are different throughout the country, and it’s important for residents of the county to know what types of LPR technology are used within the sheriff’s office.
“It’s simply a tool for law enforcement and public safety operations,” Rambosk said. “They are individually motion activated, so when a vehicle goes through a particular reader location, three images are taken of the rear of the vehicle. You’re not able to see inside a vehicle, you’re not able to identify the driver of a vehicle, about the best you can do is maybe a color, maybe a type and the license plate itself.”
Rambosk said the units throughout the county do not record live video, have no facial recognition, do not track vehicles, and do not record audio.
He also discussed the differences between private versus public LPR’s, mentioning that the sheriff office doesn’t have anything to do with private license plate readers and the data they collect. LPR data for the sheriff office is collected only from public roadways.
“At least not the ones we’re using,” Rambosk said.
In order to view data, there needs to be a specific law enforcement or public need, which is submitted into the system.
“When a plate is read, we in law enforcement never see it unless we enter a specific request…to find that license plate,” Rambosk said. “So you can be driving all over the county, we’re not looking at anything, nobody's looking at anything, but if you call in and report that your car has been stolen, we can then access that information.”
Data is stored for a maximum of 14 days in a “criminal justice information center approved GOV cloud,” however some LPR’s are reducing that number to seven. Data is also owned exclusively by the county sheriff office and data acquired by these units cannot be sold, used, or distributed by the company’s manufacturing the units.
Commissioner Burt Saunders of District 3 asked Rambosk whether the cameras are able to be upgraded to capture more information.
“I’ll have to check on, can you upgrade one that you already have,” Rambosk said. “But I can tell you, I’m not upgrading anything, I will never allow it to be upgraded, and we will never buy cameras that we…if they cannot not be upgraded, that we can turn them off because again, it’s like everything else we do just because there’s a technology out there, we know we should not be using it under the Constitution of the United States.”
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