Listen to “Using Opioid Settlement Money for ALPRs is Questionable” on Spreaker.
Some West Virginia counties and municipalities have used money received from opioid settlements to buy AI-powered automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, including Flock cameras.
The left-leaning news and commentary outlet Mother Jones reported Thursday that more than a dozen law-enforcement agencies across the country have used opioid settlement funds to purchase Flock cameras or similar ALPR technology. The West Virginia jurisdictions identified by Mother Jones included Monongalia County, Ohio County, the municipalities of Weirton, Granville and Martinsburg, Randolph County and Upshur County.
Under West Virginia’s existing opioid-settlement framework, the West Virginia First Foundation manages 72.5 percent of the funds, while counties and municipalities receive 24.5 percent directly and 3 percent is allocated to the Attorney General’s Office.
That arrangement is changing for future settlements. Attorney General J.B. McCuskey announced recently that future opioid-related recoveries obtained by the state will be allocated and utilized by the Legislature. Recoveries obtained by local governments will continue to be controlled by those local governments.
Flock cameras — and ALPRs generally — are highly controversial, and the debate does not break cleanly along typical partisan lines.
Law-enforcement officials praise the cameras as valuable tools for keeping people safe and solving crimes. Fair enough.
Opponents raise serious civil liberties concerns, particularly under the Fourth Amendment. And those concerns deserve even more attention following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this summer in Chatrie v. United States.
In Chatrie, the Court held that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they obtained a person’s Google Location History because individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their movements, including their cell-phone location information. Importantly, the Court rejected the government’s argument that acquiring only a short period of location information necessarily falls outside the Fourth Amendment.
It’s no secret: I have grave concerns about this technology and how police may use it.
Employing it during an emergency is one thing. If a child is kidnapped, for example, using the system aggressively to locate a specific suspect vehicle or license plate strikes me as entirely reasonable, subject to whatever constitutional requirements apply.
Routine surveillance is another matter.
Using ALPR databases to reconstruct a person’s movements over time without a warrant; retaining location information on innocent motorists for extended periods; or placing someone on a hot list without adequate legal safeguards should give us pause.
Chatrie does not specifically decide the constitutionality of ALPRs. But its reasoning should serve as a warning against assuming that information automatically loses Fourth Amendment protection simply because technology collects it or because a person travels in public.
Until the Legislature provides a clear framework governing the use of this technology — one that complies with both the West Virginia and United States Constitutions — counties and municipalities should exercise restraint in using opioid settlement money to purchase ALPR systems.
There is also a separate and legitimate debate over whether opioid settlement dollars should be used for these purchases at all.
Asking whether that money would be better spent directly on addiction prevention, treatment and recovery is hardly unreasonable. That is a different debate for a different day, although Gilmer County’s reported use of opioid money on a new pickleball court certainly seems to miss the mark in my view.
Counties and municipalities that want ALPR technology should consider using separate funding until the constitutional questions become clearer and the Legislature establishes, either by statute or legislative rule, uniform standards governing its use, data retention, database searches and access.
Otherwise, local governments could spend significant sums on sophisticated surveillance equipment only to discover later that courts have limited how that equipment or the data it produces may legally be used, if at all.
That could amount to money down the drain. Money that could be spent elsewhere to curb addiction.
And that helps nobody.