Winter Park Police get license plate readers

Cameras that automatically scan license plates of passersby were quietly approved by the Winter Park City Commission March 25.

The $71,478 camera system — paid for with federal forfeiture funds from drug busts — will be “another tool that could be more effective and efficient to help fight crime,” said Deputy Police Chief Art King. “They can determine if a stolen car is riding around on the street or something like that. We can put things like Amber Alerts, Blue Alerts, Silver alerts, so it really helps in that respect a lot.”

The cameras can catch criminals and other cars on an alert system that police officers may otherwise have missed, King said, improving public safety.

But the cameras have triggered backlash by anti-privacy-intrusion activists. The New York Civil Liberties Union filed suit in 2008 after the police department failed to disclose what information it was recording and storing with the cameras. The AP reports that drivers in New York City were put on lists kept by the New York Police Department just based on whether they parked near a mosque or a muslim-owned business.

The system was authorized for purchase during the Commission's consent agenda, a list of typically uncontroversial city business, but that requires a Commission vote that usually approves the entire group of items at once. Based on the size of the expense, the camera system had to be included on the Commission agenda, but the city did not list it as a discussion item. That concerned resident Paul Vonder Heide, who said that the cameras are another step in a pattern of privacy intrusion by the city.

"There is no public support for mass surveillance on law abiding citizens in Winter Park," he said. "But elected Commissioners don't think like you or me. They act as if they believe that George Orwell's ominous novel, '1984' is an instruction manual on how to govern Winter Park."

In Winter Park, one car per patrol shift will have one of the cameras mounted, starting likely in mid-May, King said.