ATLANTA, GA – Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr is leading a 19-state coalition in fighting to preserve access to automatic license-plate readers (ALPR) – a critical law enforcement tool that has helped to solve murders, kidnappings, and armed robberies.

“The evidence is clear – automatic license-plate readers help to capture some of society’s most violent criminals, who have no business being out on the streets,” said Carr. “We have a basic duty to keep our states and our communities safe. We must provide law enforcement with the tools they need, and the record of success with this critical technology is exemplary.”

In a brief filed in Shannon Schemel, et al., v. City of Marco Island, Florida, the attorneys general argue that state and local governments are permitted to use technology to ensure public safety and bring criminals to justice. This includes automatic license plate readers, which enable law enforcement on opposite ends of the country to coordinate the apprehension of criminals and the recovery of countless victims. More than 20 states, including Georgia, have enacted statutes regulating law enforcement’s use of automatic license plate readers, and the brief lists several examples in which this data has proven essential to criminal investigations.

  • In one recent case, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office was alerted by a roadside ALPR to a car associated with a missing person. Deputies eventually arrested the driver, a 25-year-old Idaho sex offender, and rescued the missing child he was transporting.
  • Last October, shortly after a Statesboro woman told police she could not find her son, the man’s car alerted an ALPR near Cincinnati. Statesboro officers coordinated with their Ohio counterparts to apprehend the driver, who was soon charged with murder after the missing man’s body was found. 
  • Last month, DeKalb County Police used an ALPR system to make three arrests mere hours after a gas-station shooting critically injured a nearby toddler.
  • In July, Police in Lawrenceville used an ALPR alert to locate a funeral home operator wanted for sex trafficking, child molestation, and a host of other felonies more than 200 miles away from his base of operations in rural Adel, Georgia.

Yet, with this suit, individuals are attempting to declare the use of this technology unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. More than two dozen district courts have previously rejected similar challenges, and the attorneys general ask the Eleventh Circuit to do the same.

As stated in the brief, “If courts strip law enforcement of this valuable crime-fighting tool, our streets will be more dangerous, our investigations less effective, our criminals emboldened, and our people less safe. Nothing in the Constitution requires that chilling result.”

The following attorneys general have joined in signing this Georgia-led brief: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia

Find a copy of the brief Download this pdf file. here .