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What is Good Policing?

by improving police

What is good policing? How do you know if your police department is providing it?

There are over 16 thousand police departments in our nation and there are over 600,000 police with no national standards. This means policing is local in our nation and, therefore, the improvement of police must be taken on at the local level.

•           Quality policing begins at home.

•           Citizens determine the quality of their police departments.

•           Quality policing is dependent upon public approval.

A few years ago, Michael Scott and I wrote a short piece on these qualities. If you are unsure about what you should expect from your police, read on:

Qualities of Police in a Free and Democratic Society

David C. Couper and Michael S. Scott

•           Accountable

Police recognize the nature and extent of their discretionary authority and must always be accountable to the people, their elected representatives, and the law for their actions, and be as transparent as possible in their decision-making.

•           Collaborative

Police must be able to collaborate, as appropriate, with community members and other organizations in settling disagreements, choosing policing strategies, and solving policing problems. This collaborative style must also apply to the way police departments are led and managed. This means police leaders must actively listen to their officers and work with them in identifying and resolving department and community problems.

•           Educated and trained

All police officers with arrest powers should begin their career with a broad and advanced education in the sciences and humanities. Training should consist of rigorous and extensive training courses in an adult-learning climate that teaches both the ethics and skills of democratic policing.

•           Effective and preventive

The mark of a good police department and the officers who work within it is that they continuously seek to handle their business more effectively and fairly, emphasizing preventing crime and disorder and not merely responding to it, and applying research and practical knowledge, using problem-solving methods, toward that end.

•           Honest

Honesty and good ethical practice are essential. The search for and cultivation of these traits begin with the selection process and continue throughout an officer’s career. Only those police candidates who have demonstrated good decision-making so far in their lives should be selected.

•           Model citizen

Police officers must not only be good police officers, but good citizens as well, modeling the values and virtues of good citizenship in their professional and personal lives.

•           Peacekeeper and protector

The police role is, above all else, that of community peacekeepers, and not merely law enforcers or crime fighters. Their training, work, and values all point towards the keeping of peace in the community. As gatekeepers to the criminal justice system, police must see themselves as defenders and protectors of Constitutional and human rights, especially for those who cannot defend or care for themselves in our society.

•           Representative

The members of police organizations must be demographically representative of the communities they serve, both because it reflects fair employment opportunities and because it enables the police to be more effective in achieving their objectives.

•           Respectful

Police officers should treat all persons with unconditional courtesy and respect, and be willing to listen to others, especially to those without social power or status. Likewise, police leaders should treat their workers with courtesy and respect their employment rights.

•           Restrained

The preservation of life should be the foundation for all police use of force. Police officers should continually prepare themselves to use physical force in a restrained and proper manner, with special training in its application to those who are mentally ill. Deadly force should be used only as a last resort and only when death or serious injury of the officer or another person is imminent. Less-than-lethal force should be preferred where possible.

•           Servant leader

Every police officer, regardless of rank, must simultaneously be a good leader and a good servant, to the public and to the police organization. Servant leaders use their authority and influence to improve others’ welfare.

•           Unbiased

Although some bias is inherent in human nature, police officers recognize that they can and should train themselves to reduce their biases and deal with all people fairly and without regard to their race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic condition, national origin, citizenship status, or sexual orientation.

Too Many People in Jail? Abolish Bail

By MAYA SCHENWARMAY 8, 2015

CHICAGO — HOW can we reduce the enormous populations of our country’s local jails?

Last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York unveiled a plan to decrease the population of the Rikers Island jail complex by reducing the backlog of cases in state courts. About 85 percent of those at Rikers haven’t been convicted of any offense; they’re just awaiting trial, sometimes for as long as hundreds of days.

Mayor de Blasio’s plan is a positive step. Yet it ignores a deeper question: Why are so many people — particularly poor people of color — in jail awaiting trial in the first place?

Usually, it is because they cannot afford bail. According to a 2011 report by the city’s Independent Budget Office, 79 percent of pretrial detainees were sent to Rikers because they couldn’t post bail right away.

This is a national problem. Across the United States, most of the people incarcerated in local jails have not been convicted of a crime but are awaiting trial. And most of those are waiting in jail not because of any specific risk they have been deemed to pose, but because they can’t pay their bail.

In other words, we are locking people up for being poor. This is unjust. We should abolish monetary bail outright.

Some will argue that bail is necessary to prevent flight before trial, but there is no good basis for that assumption. For one thing, people considered to pose an unacceptable risk of flight (or violence) are not granted bail in the first place. (Though the procedures for determining who poses a risk themselves ought to be viewed with skepticism, especially since conceptions of risk are often shaped, tacitly or otherwise, by racist assumptions.)

There is also evidence that bail is not necessary to ensure that people show up for trial. In Washington, D.C., a city that makes virtually no use of monetary bail, the vast majority of arrestees who are released pretrial do return to court, and rates of additional crime before trial are low.

In addition to being unjust and unnecessary, pretrial incarceration can have harmful consequences. Not only do those who are in jail before trial suffer the trauma of confinement, but in comparison with their bailed-out counterparts, they are also more likely to be convicted at trial. As documented in a 2010 Human Rights Watch report, the legal system is substantially tougher to navigate from behind bars. People in jail face more pressure to accept plea bargains — often, ones that aren’t to their advantage — than do those confronting their charges from home.

Those who spend even a few days in jail can lose their jobs or housing during that time. Single parents can lose custody of their children. By exacerbating the effects of poverty, and by placing people in often traumatizing circumstances, pretrial incarceration may actually lead to more crime.

Bail also raises issues of racial injustice. A number of studies have shown that black defendants are assigned higher bail amounts than their white counterparts. This discrepancy is compounded by the fact that black people disproportionately live in poverty and thus unduly face challenges in paying bail.

Other burdens of bail also fall harder on people of color. For instance, black mothers face a particularly serious risk of losing custody of their children while incarcerated, because they are excessively targeted by child protective services.

Jails disproportionately confine mentally ill people, too — rates of mental illness are four to six times higher in jail than outside — and people with mental health problems often live in economic circumstances that make it difficult to afford bail. A study released in February by the Vera Institute of Justice found that one-third of jailed people with mental illness were unemployed before being arrested.

Finally, monetary bail is at odds with the legal ideal of the presumption of innocence. If we want to grant people this presumption, we must not punish them before their trials.

There is no getting around it: We are incarcerating people for being poor, at great cost to actual human lives. We have to stop.

Maya Schenwar, the editor in chief of Truthout, is the author of “Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better.”

Now how hard was that?

The release of the David Master tape six years after Masters was unjustly killed by the Fairfax County Police is sort of-kind-of- progress….like when they come up with a cure for a disease after everybody’s dead…..that kind of progress.

But progress it is.

In the end result, the department did the right thing. It investigated itself, found a gun happy loon had slipped on to the force and fired him for the public good and safety. 

Terrible things happen in life. 

One young man is dead and another has ruined his career. People understand that sort of thing, especially under the circumstances that the tape shows. Frankly, if I was chasing a guy through traffic at high speeds and he was stopped and then lunged forward, even by mistake, I’m not sure what I would do in the same situation. But one thing I know that I would do, in fact I’m positive I would do, is that I would explain myself. It’s one of those social niceties people expect after you kill a guy in public.

But the cops didn’t do that. Well they did, but it took them six to do it.  

The department took the arrogant route, said nothing, explained nothing and pissed off everybody.  Instead of releasing that information to the public…that one trigger happy cop made a tragic mistake…..the department said nothing, explained nothing, further damaged the county’s reputation and brought themselves another inch closer to federal oversight.  (Yeah, that could still happen)

The American people are fair and reasonable and almost always support and appreciate their local police and to prove it all the cops had to say was “A police guy did something stupid and tragic, here’s the tape to prove it and we fired him, we’re ready to take the blame for his actions and we understand the anger over it. We’re sorry it happened and we’re doing the best we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again”

Now how hard would that be?

Statement from Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin Roessler

May, 6, 2015 - In an effort to continue with increasing our transparency and the public trust, I have exercised my discretion under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act by authorizing the release of the in-car video from the criminal investigation into the officer-involved shooting of David Masters that occurred in the Mount Vernon District on Friday, November 13, 2009.

Based on several requests, the video was provided to the Ad Hoc Police Practices Review Commission and is posted here.

In reaching my decision to release the in-car video, I considered the following factors:  the local criminal investigation has been completed; the U.S. Department of Justice criminal investigation has been completed; and there is no pending or threatened civil litigation.

The involved officer was found to be in administrative violation of the Police Department’s General Order 540.1, Use of Force, and is no longer a member of the Fairfax County Police Department.

 I recognize the value of releasing the video to the community we proudly serve.

Justice Department Will Investigate Baltimore Police Practices

By MATT APUZZO and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

New York Times

MAY 7, 2015

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department will investigate whether the Baltimore Police Department engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional policing, law enforcement officials said on Thursday, a day after the mayor asked for an inquiry.

The request by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake came days after the state’s attorney for Baltimore filed criminal charges against six officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray, who died April 19 after being injured while in police custody. His death set off large demonstrations, arson and looting.

At a policing conference earlier on Thursday, the Baltimore police commissioner, Anthony W. Batts, said he did not object to an outside investigation, adding that he was committed to reforming the Police Department. He said he recognized that Baltimore residents did not trust the city to make changes voluntarily.

“I am willing to do anything it takes to win that trust back,” he said. “If it’s D.O.J., whatever it takes.”

Protesters said the unrest set off by Mr. Gray’s death was the culmination of years of police mistreatment. The turmoil has dominated Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch’s first days in office.

“The situation in Baltimore involves a core responsibility of the Department of Justice — not only to combat illegal conduct when it occurs, but to help prevent the circumstances that give rise to it in the first place,” Ms. Lynch said on Capitol Hill on Thursday.

There was no immediate reaction from Ms. Rawlings-Blake. Earlier Thursday, the mayor convened business, religious and philanthropic leaders at the intersection of West North and Pennsylvania Avenues, near a CVS store that was looted and burned in last week’s riots, to announce a public-private partnership to improve areas devastated by the unrest. She called it a “once-in-a-generation effort to tackle inequality.”

Ms. Lynch, who took office a week after Mr. Gray died, was in Baltimore this week to meet with community, religious and political leaders about whether to conduct a “pattern or practice” review, which would look into whether police officers used excessive force, carried out street stops based on race or arrested people without probable cause.

Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a Democrat who represents Baltimore — and who lives four blocks from the CVS that was burned — said there was uniform agreement.

“She asked them, ‘How many of you all think we should have a patterns and practices review investigation?’ ” Mr. Cummings recalled in an interview Thursday. “If I remember correctly, all of them raised their hands; there were about 40 of them. And I raised mine too.”

Mr. Cummings said that even before that meeting, he and other members of Congress from Maryland had a conference call with Ms. Lynch shortly after she took office in which he asked for such a review.

The decision by the Justice Department was welcome news to civil rights advocates who had been pressing for a review for a long time. “A range of people and organizations have been asking for this for years,” said Sonia Kumar, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, “but really, I think those calls became louder and more forceful in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray.”

Civil rights investigations often end with court settlements and independent oversight of police departments. They can be powerful agents of change, but they are not immediate, and the Baltimore investigation could take a year or more. A similar investigation into the Police Department in Ferguson, Mo., took seven months, an extraordinarily fast timeline for such cases.

Mr. Batts and the mayor had already asked the Justice Department’s community-policing experts to conduct a voluntary review of the department. The preliminary results of that review will most likely be released in the coming weeks and are expected to recommend changes to training and use-of-force policies. Those recommendations would not be binding, but Mr. Batts said he planned to work with the community-policing experts to make changes to the department regardless of what civil rights investigators did.

A version of this article appears in print on May 8, 2015, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Justice Dept. Will Examine Baltimore’s Police Patterns. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe 

Murderous Arrogance: Six years later the Fairfax County Police Release tape of questionable killing…

Once again Sharon Bulova and John Faust said nothing and did nothing about it and now they want you to reelect them.

  

Fairfax County police release video in 2009 officer involved shooting

By Tom Jackman May 6 at 5:33 PM

Fairfax County police Officer David S. Ziants, left, and an unidentified Fairfax officer approach a green Chevrolet Blazer, right, seconds before Ziants shot and killed the unarmed driver, David Masters. (Fairfax County Police Department dashboard video)

Note: This post has been updated to edit the video and add the comments of Masters’ father and ex-wife.

David Masters of Fredericksburg was shot and killed by Fairfax County police Officer David Scott Ziants on Nov. 13, 2009, as Masters drove on Route 1 in the Alexandria area of Fairfax County. Masters was unarmed and had ripped some flowers out of a planter in front of a business, which led to the police pursuit.

On Wednesday, the Fairfax police released the dash cam video from Ziants’s car. The actual shooting is not visible, but the sounds of the shots can be heard (at 1:49), followed by another officer apparently telling Ziants, “What are you doing? Hold up! Whoa! Hold up! The —- you doing dude? Come on.”

Fairfax County police release 2009 video of officer involved shooting(3:00)

On Wednesday, Fairfax County police released dash cam footage of the 2009 chase of David Masters, which ended in him being fatally shot by police. (YouTube/Fairfax County Government)

Fairfax police did not explain why they chose today, more than five years later, to release the video. In March, the police rejected a freedom of information act request from The Washington Post to allow a review of the investigative file in the case, also without explanation. In Virginia, law enforcement agencies may release, or withhold, any investigative information under state public information law, indefinitely.

[The circumstances leading up to the death of David Masters on Route 1.]

In a statement accompanying the release, Fairfax police Chief Edwin C. Roessler said: “In an effort to continue with increasing our transparency and the public trust, I have exercised my discretion under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act by authorizing the release of the in-car video from the criminal investigation into the officer-involved shooting of David Masters that occurred in the Mount Vernon District on Friday, November 13, 2009. Based on several requests, the video was provided to the Ad Hoc Police Practices Review Commission and is posted here. In reaching my decision to release the in-car video, I considered the following factors:  the local criminal investigation has been completed; the U.S. Department of Justice criminal investigation has been completed; and there is no pending or threatened civil litigation.”

Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh ruled in January 2010 that Ziants had not committed a crime, because Ziants believed that Masters was driving a stolen car, was reaching for a gun and had run over another officer, none of which was true. Ziants was allowed to remain on the force until May 2011, when then-Chief David M. Rohrer fired Ziants.

Barrie Masters, 83, said the Fairfax police sent him a link to watch the video, and “I am really distraught. It’s totally wiped me out.” He asked, “How can we live in a world where a cop can just come up behind somebody, no matter what he thinks has been going on, and just shoot him in the back?”

Barrie Masters, a former Army colonel now living in Florida, said, “The fact is, if David committed a crime, the most it was was a misdemeanor for five dollars worth of flowers. The [police] regulations specifically prohibit the use of deadly force.” Masters said he was still hopeful that a special prosecutor might be empaneled to investigate and charge Ziants.

Gail Masters, who was David Masters’s ex-wife and remained his best friend and caretaker, was devastated again Wednesday after seeing the video. Fairfax police did not contact her, though she is the executor of his estate.

“I’m still miserable,” she said. “I’ve been praying that they would charge him [Ziants]. It’s not fair that he’s out there having a good time and Dave’s gone. I haven’t been myself since it happened. It’s just like they say, a part of you leaves and doesn’t come back.”

David Masters was 52, a former Army Green Beret and carpenter living on disability payments after a work accident, and had bipolar disorder, his ex-wife said. He was driving a blue-green Chevrolet Blazer with the license plate “F001″ up Route 1 from Fredericksburg when he apparently pulled over outside a landscaping business and ripped some flowers out of some planters. An employee confronted him, but Masters hopped in the Blazer, with several of his ex-wife’s puppies inside, and continued north.

The landscaping employee called police. As Masters headed north on Route 1, Ziants spotted him. Ziants, then 26 and a former Army soldier, told police that he confused Ziants’ vehicle with another vehicle wanted in a stolen car case, Morrogh said in 2010. The video shows Ziants turning on his lights and siren and pursuing Masters for about a mile up the highway, with Masters at one point running a red light, then squeezing through stopped cars at another intersection, refusing to stop for the officer.

Finally at Fort Hunt Road, another Fairfax cruiser blocks Masters’ Blazer in. Ziants and two other officers approach the car. But the light turns green and the Blazer starts to pull away. Ziants yells for the Blazer to stop, while another officer appears to tell him, “No no no no.” Then, two shots, while the other officer loudly implores him to stop firing.

Wait until this Klan rally is over and then boycott the businesses that supported it

Police Violence Casts Shadow on Sporting Event

by MARK HAND

In late June and early July, thousands of police officers and fire service workers from around the world will converge on Fairfax County, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C., to participate in an Olympic-style competition known as the World Police & Fire Games.

The 10-day-long games will feature traditional athletic events such as track and field and boxing. Police officers also will be eligible to compete in police pistol combat events and service dog competitions that include narcotics detection and subduing suspects.

The games’ organizers, the California Police Athletic Federation, tout the biennial event as one of the world’s largest multi-sport events, second only to the Olympics in terms of the number of participants. First held in 1985 in San Jose, Calif., the games are open to active and retired law enforcement officers and fire service personnel. About 12,000 athletes from more than 70 countries are expected to compete in 61 events in 53 different venues in Fairfax County and other parts of the D.C. metropolitan area from June 26 to July 5.

The previous World Police & Fire Games, held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, were deemed “the best and friendliest ever” games by its organizers. The organizers estimated the cost of the event at about 13 million pounds, or $18 million. The Fairfax County games are expected to cost about $20 million.

After hosting the event in 2013, organizers of the Belfast games expressed disappointment with the number of participants from outside Northern Ireland. “The consequence of lower out of state numbers has a knock-on impact on subsequent monetary targets: commercial bed nights; registration and event entry fees; and economic benefit,” the organizers of the Belfast games said in an event post-mortem released in February 2014.

Following the lead of previous host cities, the Fairfax County government will be lavishing the private event with at least $3 million of taxpayer money. Public funds will be going to the games as the county’s public schools are facing a financial crisis and as the county’s library system is dealing with budget cuts of almost 30% over the past 10 years on a real spending basis.

Despite budget problems with the county’s core services, government officials are excited about the millions they agreed to spend on the games. “Fairfax County has pledged $3 million to host and sponsor the games. With several more million in staffing and public safety to come,” Fairfax County Chairwoman Sharon Bulova, the county’s top elected official, boasted at a 2014 event to promote the games. Bulova declined a request to comment on the World Police & Fire Games for this article.

In 2009, Fairfax County officials highlighted the economic benefit of hosting the World Police & Fire Games when they were competing with their counterparts in Toronto and Winnipeg, Canada, to win the games for 2015. Organizers estimated a regional economic impact of $60 million to $80 million in revenue from the event. Drawing on the Olympics parallel, the Fairfax County games organizers also hired a former Olympic organizer, Bill Knight, to serve as chief executive of its effort.

Some experts aren’t convinced these types of sporting events are big revenue-producers. When it comes to the Olympics, for example, Philip Porter, an economist at the University of South Florida who has studied the impact of sporting events, told The New York Times that the evidence is unequivocal on cities that host the Olympics. “The bottom line is, every time we’ve looked — dozens of scholars, dozens of times — we find no real change in economic activity,” he said.

Whether the World Police & Fire Games gives Fairfax County a big financial boost remains to be seen. What is certain is the event’s athletic competitions will give police officers and fire service personnel an opportunity to show off their athletic prowess.

A contingent from the Baltimore Police Department is likely to make the 40-mile trek south to participate in the games. The World Police & Fire Games will provide an intriguing juxtaposition for the city’s police department: Baltimore’s finest will be hailed as heroes in Fairfax County at the same time that six of their colleagues face criminal charges in the death of city resident Freddie Gray.

Fairfax County itself is under scrutiny for extreme police violence. Earlier this year, the Fairfax County government paid almost $3 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of a man, John Geer, who was killed by a county police officer while standing in the doorway of his home. On top of the Geer settlement, the county could face another multi-million-dollar lawsuit after members of the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office recently used a Taser against a woman who was fully restrained in the county jail. The woman died from the delivery of four 50,000 volt shocks from the Taser.

The organizers of the World Police & Fire Games likely are hoping the ongoing focus on police violence in Ferguson, Mo., New York City, North Charleston, S.C., Baltimore and many other cities does not overshadow the games. And Fairfax County residents should not be surprised if the county agrees to spend additional public funds on security due to concerns about protesters showing up at the various events.

Mark Hand covers political action. You can reach him at markhand13@gmail.com

Where was John Faust when the cops were pulling this stunt? Throw the bum out of office

Hi! 

I'm John Faust. I'm on the Board of Supervisors and I'm terrified of the cops, I've never done anything to bring them under control and here's an example of something else I didn't do. I didn't stop them or even speak out against the cops collecting hundreds of thousands of license plates of innocent citizens for no reason the cops can explain. 

So remember Vote Faust, if you dumb enough to elect me once I'll probably get away with it again! 

ACLU Sues Fairfax County Police Over License-Plate Data

FAIRFAX, Va. — The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia is suing Fairfax County police over a policy in which they store data collected on thousands of drivers through the use of license-plate readers.

The civil-liberties group filed the suit Tuesday in Fairfax County Circuit Court. The ACLU alleges that keeping a database of information collected through license-plate readers amounts to an illegal invasion of privacy.

In 2013, Virginia’s attorney general advised state police that data collected by plate readers is personal information under state law and can’t be kept unless it’s part of a specific criminal investigation.

The ruling prompted state police to stop collecting data, but local police agencies, including Fairfax, still collect and share the data.

A county spokesman did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday evening.

Follow WNEW on Twitter

VIRGINIA MAN SUES POLICE OVER LICENSE PLATE DATABASE

In what appears to be a legal first, a Virginia man has sued the Fairfax County Police Department for collecting images of his license plate in a massive database.

Harrison Neal, a Fairfax resident, filed the suit after learning that his license plate had been scanned by an automatic license plate reader twice last year and stored in a police database, even though he was not a suspect in a criminal investigation. The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia filed the lawsuit on Tuesday on behalf of Neal.

Although individuals have filed suits to obtain records stored in such databases, this is the first case known to target a law enforcement agency over an alleged illegal use of a database.

The database, the complaint (.pdf) asserts, violates a Virginia statute—the Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act—which prohibits government agencies from collecting, storing, or disseminating the personal information of individuals unnecessarily.

Automatic license plate readers have become a hot topic in recent years, akin to the government’s warrantless use of GPS trackers on vehicles and stingrays or IMSI catchers that are used to track the location of cell phones and other mobile devices.

The readers, often mounted on a vehicle or in a fixed location, use cameras and optical character recognition technology to take images of license plates and store them in searchable databases. Insurance agencies and impounders use them to locate stolen vehicles or vehicles belonging to people who are behind on their payments. But law enforcement agencies also use them.

Civil liberties groups consider the readers and databases a violation of privacy because it’s possible to discover a lot about a person simply by recording the location of their car over a period of time. The readers can also capture much more than license plates. In California, a computer security consultant named Michael Katz-Lacabe discovered that authorities in his San Francisco Bay Area town had collected images of his two cars 112 times in a database, including one image taken in 2009 that showed him and his two daughters exiting one of the cars while it was parked in their driveway.

But proponents of the technology argue that the data collected is innocuous compared to other data like cell-phone location information.

“We’re not insensitive to people’s right to privacy,” Terry Jungel, executive director of the Michigan Sheriffs’ Association said in 2013 over a battle in his state about license plate databases. “If Big Brother is going to abuse information, there’s better information to abuse than this.”

Neal discovered images of his car in the database maintained by the Fairfax Police Department after filing a public records request recently. In response, he received two sheets of paper containing an image of his car, along with a chart indicating the times and dates the images were taken and a map showing a street location, believed to be the location of the reader when it snapped the images.

But Virginia’s state law should have prevented his images from being stored. In February 2013, the state’s attorney general issued an opinion advising the State Police that automatic license plate readers do collect personal information, as defined by the Act, and therefore agencies cannot legally collect and store that data unless it’s related to a specific criminal investigation. The pronouncement came in part after it was discovered that Virginia State Police had used license plate readers in 2008 to collect information about people who had attended rallies for Sarah Palin and Barack Obama during the presidential election that year.

Subsequent to the attorney general’s pronouncement, the Virginia State Police stopped storing license plate records and established a policy for purging such information within 24 hours after being collected by a reader, unless the information is relevant to a criminal investigation.

But, according to the ACLU of Virginia, other government agencies in the state have failed to follow suit. The Fairfax Police Department, for example, stores license plate images for up to a year, regardless of their relevance to an investigation.

The department also has an agreement with law enforcement agencies in Maryland and the District of Columbia to share information collected in its database.

“Like many other technologies, ALPRs have legitimate law enforcement uses,” Rebecca Glenberg, legal director of the ACLU of Virginia said in a statement. “We do not object to the real-time use of ALPRs to compare license plate numbers to a current ‘hot list’ of vehicles involved in current investigations. The danger to privacy comes when the government collects tens of thousands of license plate records so it can later find out where people were and when. The intrusion is magnified in the Washington, D.C. area, where multiple law enforcement agencies may access each other’s information.”

ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION

May 6, 2015 | By Dave Maass

Virginia Governor Signs Warrant Requirement for Drones, Rejects License Plate Reader Limits

With broad and near-unanimous bipartisan support, the Virginia General Assembly passed a series of bills this year to defend the public’s right to privacy from new mass surveillance technologies.

To his credit, Gov. Terry McAuliffe almost immediately signed a bill to require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before tracking people’s mobile phones with cell tower emulators, often called “stingrays.” But he initially balked at two other bills: one that would have also required police to get a warrant before using drones and another that would’ve placed strict limitations on other mass surveillance technologies, including a seven-day limit on the retention of locational data collected through automatic license plate readers (ALPR).

McAuliffe sent these two measures back to the legislature with suggested amendments, who sent them right back to his desk with only the slightest changes. The message was clear: these protections are what Virginians want and what they deserve.

The second time around, McAuliffe signed the drone bill, but he vetoed the ALPR bill, parroting the flawed talking points of the device manufacturers and law enforcement lobby groups:

Many localities in Virginia retain this data for 60 days to two years. Seven days is a substantial reduction. Additionally, law enforcement agencies demonstrate that crimes are often not reported until several weeks later. Under this bill, essential data would not be available at the time of those reports. This is particularly concerning when considering implications for the National Capitol Region, where cross-state collaboration and information-sharing are essential to responding to potential criminal or terrorist activity occurring near Virginia’s borders.

What McAuliffe fails to mention is those law enforcement agencies are already breaking Virginia’s Data Act by storing ALPR data, as the Virginia Attorney General determined in a 2013 legal opinion [PDF]. He also pays little attention to the threat to personal privacy that ALPRs represent: by collecting information on every driver, police are treating the entire population as if they’re suspects in a criminal investigation. Even more worrisome is how these cameras, which are capable of collecting thousands of locational data points a day, can potentially reveal the intimate details of a person’s life, including religious preferences, political affiliations, medical conditions, and romantic relationships.  Indeed, as the ACLU of Virginia notes:

In 2013, public records revealed that during the 2008 election, Virginia State Police used ALPRs to collect information about people attending rallies for candidates Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, and later targeted vehicles crossing from Virginia to Washington for Obama’s inauguration.

McAuliffe also failed to address some of the more questionable techniques used by ALPR companies to shield their products from public scrutiny, such as contracts that forbid agencies from talking candidly publicly about the technology. In Lansing, Michigan, police have given up on ALPRs because they were unreliable and drained the batteries of their cars. In San Francisco, police have been sued after a false positive resulted in a confrontation between officers and an innocent government employee.

The ACLU of Virginia isn’t giving up. Five days after McAuliffe signed the bills, the organization filed a lawsuit [PDF] against the Fairfax County Police Department, which, despite the Attorney General’s guidance, has been storing ALPR data for up to a year and sharing that data with other law enforcement agencies in the region. If successful, the lawsuit could potentially have an even stronger impact on ALPR limits than what the bill would have provided.

We're very proud of the hundreds of EFF supporters in Virginia who sent letters to their lawmakers and tweeted at the governor about these measures. And, again, we commend McAuliffe for signing bills to limit the use of stingrays and drones, but we’ll be rooting for the ACLU as they pursue other means to challenge invasive technologies such as ALPRs.