Accountability
How each agency handles your data.
Every police department and sheriff that runs plate readers, graded on how long it keeps data, how widely it shares, whether it publishes audits and policy, and whether misuse has been reported.
What we grade
Five things, each from a public source.
- Retention How many days plate data is kept.
- Sharing How many outside agencies can search it, and whether it joins national lookups.
- Audits Whether search audits are published.
- Policy Whether a written policy is public.
- Misuse Reported cases of misuse.
Missing records cost points, because keeping policies secret is part of the grade. An agency with fewer than two documented answers shows ? until more records are found.
Data arriving
Agency scorecards
Researchers are gathering these records now, Kentucky first. Each record will link to its source document and show when it was checked. This page fills in automatically as records are verified.