ATLANTA — Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr announced Tuesday that he was leading more than a dozen other state attorneys general in efforts to preserve their access to data from automatic license-plate readers.
Calling the technology a “critical law enforcement tool that has helped to solve murders, kidnappings and armed robberies,” the AG’s office said states must retain access to automated license plate readers to ensure they can capture violent criminals.
“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,” Carr said in a statement. “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.”
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
RELATED STORIES:
- Residents concerned over privacy as Dunwoody City Council to vote on renewing Flock Safety contract
- Metro Atlanta police department partners with Flock, encourages residents to join network
- Smyrna City Council OKs 70 new Flock Safety cameras
- Sandy Springs police officer terminated after allegedly using city’s Flock cameras for personal gain
The office listed several examples of license-plate readers, such as those developed by Flock Safety, being used to capture criminals in different parts of Georgia:
- 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.
Georgia’s brief in support of the ALPR systems is in response to a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Florida to declare the technology unconstitutional on Fourth Amendment grounds.
The AG’s office said the technology has faced similar challenges in over 24 district courts, all of which rejected them.
Georgia filed the brief in federal court, leading Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia in working to preserve access to the surveillance technology.
[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
©2026 Cox Media Group
