Shakopee Police Now Scanning License Plates with Automatic Reader

A couple of boxy bundles of metal and glass projecting from the roof of one of Shakopee's new squad SUVs are now scanning the city's streets and reading license plates in a search for vehicles that are stolen or wanted in connection to a crime.

The Shakopee Police Department purchased its first Automatic Number Plate Recognition reader for $20,000 a few weeks ago, the Shakopee Valley News is reporting. Police Chief Jeff Tate hopes to buy two more with grant money.

Shakopee motorists have already been picked up on warrants from the reader, which the city purchased using forfeiture funds from drug busts and other operations.

“It’s one of the few tools out there that really is going to lead to more arrests,” Tate told the Shakopee Valley News. “You could be going by each other 50 miles per hour and it can still read the plate.”

Shakopee is the first police agency in Scott County to acquire one of the readers, though the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community has used the readers for the past three years.

The Shakopee Valley News has more about the reader's privacy implications:

While the license readers — mounted to overpasses and poles in some jurisdictions — will help police catch more criminals, they’re not without controversy due to the large amount of location data stored. Investigators can check if a person suspected of a crime was driving in a certain area within a given period of time, sometimes months back.

With Minneapolis getting requests from the public for the data, the Minnesota Department of Administration was asked to rule the information private. Last week, the agency made the ruling, but it came a day after the city handed over more than 2 million plate scans to several requesters, the Star Tribune reported.

The classification is only good to 2015, so lawmakers are working on legislation to make the data permanently non-public. One state senator has drafted a bill that also requires police to destroy location data on noncriminals within 90 days.