Nashville City Council Forbids License Plate Reader Data To Be Used For Immigration Enforcement
Image Credit: Tony Webster / CC
The Tennessee Conservative [By Paula Gomes] –
Metro City Council in Nashville voted Tuesday night to prevent License Plate Reader data from being used to enforce immigration laws. The measure passed in a vote of 32-1 with only council member Robert Swope opposing.
Automatic License Plate Readers (LPR) can be used to find those who are driving recklessly, those wanted by police and people involved in AMBER and SILVER alerts. The cities of Mount Juliet and Belle Meade currently operate LPR successfully.
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Metro has committed to a six-month LPR pilot program after debating the proposal for more than a year, but there is no announced timeline as to when the system will be up and running. When it is operational, local law enforcement will not be allowed to share data from the cameras with federal authorities in order to identify, apprehend, detain or remove illegal aliens.
However, state law requires local police departments to cooperate with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to verify or report a person’s immigration status.
State leaders including Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton have criticized the council’s decision saying that Metro “doesn’t get to decide which state or federal laws they enforce.”
The pilot program will place LPR to capture images of license plates as they pass. The images captured will be kept for 10 days and then deleted. Law enforcement may only access the data if there is reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed.
The LPR program in Mount Juliet triggers an alert when a license plate is associated with a crime and on a hotlist, generated from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. The technology does not know who is driving or who is in the car and does not access the Department of Safety’s license plate database to determine who owns the vehicle. No facial recognition is employed with the program.
Metro’s six-month trial will allow Nashville police to check images of license plates against the plate numbers of vehicles that have been stolen. Police will also be able to use the LPR data to cross reference for vehicles flagged for potential connections to violent crime, felony offenses, reckless driving or missing persons.
About the Author: Paula Gomes is a Tennessee resident and reporter for The Tennessee Conservative. You can reach Paula at paula@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
In other words they want to help the idiot president violate the immigration laws. I suppose liberal in any state are all the same. No wonder the U.S. is in such bad shape.
Bunch of traitors.
This whole thing is the fault of the general public. Joe Biden and his crew should be under arrest, better yet thrown out of office for not enforcing the law and the Metro Council should be under arrest for violation of their oaths of office. I can’t pick and choose the laws I want to obey, what gives them the right. Cowardice of the masses, that’s what.
Gov. Lee should cut all State funding to the City if they refuse to uphold the law. Dump a few bus loads off at these illegal aliens in the City Councils neighborhood/ Frond Doors!!!
This council has to be the worst ever. They are as bad as the Nashville Mayor. Totally Stupid.
Then they should not be used at all!
Hire more police.
Separate the sherifs dept from metro just like other states. They should work for the people NOT the machine.
Equality across the board.
BTW: they CAN look at plates if they suspect illegals….illegal = breaking the law!
Excerpt from this article: “When it is operational, local law enforcement will not be allowed to share data from the cameras with federal authorities in order to identify, apprehend, detain or remove illegal aliens. ”
Oh now, that is just plain hilarious. Moot point. Since when do federal authorities apprehend, detain, or remove illegal aliens?
Those cameras are to track, arrest, and control us, the regular, taxpaying citizens. We are such fools, all of us.