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License plate cameras are popping up around West St. Paul as part of a pilot police program to catch criminals. While the police are seeing quick successes, it is prompting confusion and fears about surveillance and privacy. We talked to West St. Paul Police Chief Brian Sturgeon to answer some questions.
Short version: West St. Paul installed four cameras (six more coming) that capture license plates and alert officers to wanted vehicles. The West St. Paul Police Department controls the data. It can not be used by federal agencies (without approval) or private companies. In two months, the cameras have helped police in 10 cases involving assault, vehicle theft, credit card fraud, and more.
What Is It: The Basics
- The tech: License plate readers (LPRs) take photos of the license plates of passing vehicles and compare them to a state database looking for matches. Officers can then be alerted that a wanted vehicle just passed the camera.
- Who gets matched: The state database includes stolen vehicles, wanted vehicles (for example, a suspect in a recently committed crime), missing persons/Amber Alerts, and vehicles where the owner has an outstanding warrant or their driving privileges have been revoked, suspended, or canceled. The database can include warrants from across the nation.
- Old tech: “License plate readers and that verification process is absolutely nothing new,” Sturgeon said. West St. Paul has been using LPRs in police cars since 2012.
- What’s new: The stationary cameras are new. They’re positioned at specific intersections. The city leases the hardware and software from a company called Flock. About 50 police agencies across the Twin Cities metro are using this technology. The Pioneer Press recently reported on Stillwater’s Flock program.
- What it’s not: These are not red light/stop sign cameras and are not cameras to catch speeding.
- Where: The city is required to report camera locations to the state and that list is publicly available. The current four cameras that are operational are mostly near Oakdale, trying to catch vehicles coming into the city from Highway 52.
- How long: Data is stored for 30 days. State law mandates that it can’t be stored for more than 60 days.
- Cost: The cameras cost about $3,000 each per year. West St. Paul and South St. Paul jointly received a $41,000 state grant to help pay for implementation in the first few years.
- Who approved: West St. Paul City Council unanimously approved the grant in August as part of the consent agenda. “This is just a pilot program,” said Sturgeon. “We’ll be keeping the Council updated on successes and things of that nature, and we’ll determine whether or not this is feasible program.”
What Are the Concerns?
Government surveillance often raises privacy and security concerns. There have been incidents reported in other states and the ACLU has raised concerns.
- Is the data secure?: “It gets downloaded to Flock through an FBI Criminal Justice Information System, a secured platform,” said Sturgeon. “So there are requirements that these vendors have to go through in order to house this data in compliance with federal and state laws.”
- Who owns the data?: “The data is managed by the state of Minnesota, and all the information that is gathered on these cameras is our information,” said Sturgeon. “So Flock can’t use our data for anything.”
- Who has access to the data?: “Data is shared with other law enforcement agencies that go through the approval process with us, such as our surrounding cities,” Sturgeon said. No private companies can access the data and federal agencies do not have blanket access. They would need to go through the same approval process and have a legitimate need for specific data.
- Can Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) use this data?: “They would be able to request it,” Sturgeon said. “However, if it is just an immigration violation, we’re not getting involved, so they won’t get that information. Now, if there’s a warrant out for somebody’s arrest—an actual arrest warrant for a criminal violation that a U.S. District Court judge signed—well then, yeah, just like with the FBI or anybody else, we’d probably provide that information. But if it has anything to do with just immigration, we cannot and will not provide that information, because we don’t get involved in immigration stuff.”
- What protections are in place?: “People just can’t be going in there and querying information,” Sturgeon said. Searching a specific license plate already photographed requires an officer name and case number, creating an audit trail. The city has to provide an annual audit report to the state. The city can also add a license plate for the cameras to look for, but it requires a court order or a case of imminent danger and a form with more details required. “We’ve never done that,” Sturgeon said. “The only time that I can see us entering anything manually is if it is a homicide, some type of situation where somebody was shot or murdered or something like that. Something really serious, that’s the only time that we would allow something like that.”
- What happens when it’s a wrong match?: “This is technology that you have to confirm. Just like utilizing AI, you don’t trust anything, you have to confirm it,” Sturgeon said, emphasizing that the confirmation has to happen before they make a stop. “If an officer does not verify the information before intervening, there will be consequences, that’s for sure.”
- What about privacy concerns?: “I have absolutely no privacy concerns in the state of Minnesota,” said Sturgeon. “Minnesota has statutes in place that are very specific.”
- What about some of these reported incidents?: “I think a lot of that stuff happens in states that don’t have or have very lax rules governing license plate readers,” Sturgeon said. “Minnesota is very specific and they thought about this for a while. They got lots of input from various stakeholders when they put that statute in place.”
- What about private companies?: There are private companies, such as Lowe’s in West St. Paul, using Flock cameras to address thefts internally. Collections agencies also use LPRs, often driving through parking lots looking for vehicles that need to be repossessed. But those are separate issues and don’t have the same state oversight.
South St. Paul has an FAQ that addresses additional questions as well as a transparency portal with data on the Flock cameras. West St. Paul is working to add their transparency portal.
How’s It Working?
So how are these new stationary LPRs making a difference in West St. Paul? So far the Flock cameras were instrumental in 10 cases:
- Immediate results: Within a day or two of the first camera going up, police were able to identify and charge someone for misdemeanor theft.
- Assault: Police took a suspect into custody who pushed an elderly woman down the stairs, severely injuring her, and then the suspect fled the scene.
- Stolen vehicles: Three stolen vehicles were recovered and police made arrests in those cases. Sturgeon noted that stolen vehicles often take months to recover and this process is much faster.
- Financial fraud: Several people were charged with credit card fraud thanks to the cameras.
- Pursuit: Police arrested someone who had previously evaded officers. They didn’t pursue, but were able to catch the person later using the cameras.
“With only four cameras up and running so far, I think we’ve had a pretty darn good success rate,” said Sturgeon.
Dec. 1, 2025 Update: Star Tribune Story
A Star Tribune article over the weekend covered license plate cameras across the metro with quotes from a West St. Paul officer:
“We’re not using it to track people,” said Patrol Lieutenant Tim Sewald. “It’s just a way to easily respond to any kind of hits that come into our city. The main goal is to keep our residents safe, and I really do believe that it helps us do that.”
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Note: Updated Nov. 20, 2025 to add what the cameras do not do.
I am a resident of West St. Paul. I was personally victimized by ALPR (automated license plate reader) abuse perpetrated by a police department in another state. My car was flagged in the nationwide database that all Flock cameras are part of as having been involved in a felony that I have no knowledge of and was not involved in. It appears that an officer from said department happened to see my car parked near where a felony may have been occurring and threw my licence number up in the 50-state database without much consideration. The attorney who helped me investigate the incident confirmed that what this officer did was unconstitutional. He says that it was “sloppy policing”, presumably done because said department has too few officers relative to the level of crime in their community so the perpetrating officer just threw something out there and moved on to the next call.
Having had that experience, it’s distressing to see these cameras appear in my own community. Worse than what happened to me, some police officers use their Flock logins to stalk their victims. At least one friend of mine is concerned that her stalker may use the cameras to see where she goes and when.
For those interested in learning about the issues and risks associated with Flock cameras, there’s a really well-done and brief informational video by the YouTuber Saveitforparts entitled “These Controversial AI Cameras Are Tracking Your Every Move”.
Roll the dice and hope no one ever randomly commits a felony near where your car is parked when you’re out and about. It happened to me. It could happen to anyone.
If you have concerns about the risk of being victimized, or if you have been victimized by ALPR abuse yourself, I would encourage you to share your concerns with the WSP city council. If enough residents express concerns, there’s a chance that WSP may remove the cameras.
“You can’t get a breath of fresh air in that town without us knowing.”. – Sergeant Jamie Milliman of Colorado
I would much rather these entities not have our data to begin with than to give them that data and trust that a) their security is as reliable as they think it is and b) that they won’t change their minds about how it should be used and who it should be shared with. Time and time again we see security breaches at private companies who claim to have airtight security and it puts all of their customers at risk. We also see the federal government fighting tooth and nail to access any data they can possibly get from states and municipalities right now, and lengthy court battles taking place that have no guarantee of coming out on the side of keeping state and local data private. To me, the potential risks for abuse by federal agencies, theft of data by bad actors breaking into Flock, the potential for people trusted with access to this data to decide to use it abusively, etc are all reasons why this is a bad deal for all of us. We should make decisions about surveillance based not just on what will happen immediately when it’s enabled, but what *could* happen in the future because once you give an inch on this, bad actors can take miles.
Just because Barney Fife thinks these are helpful isn’t a reason we should be ok with these absurdly insecure cameras. I’d like to point out none of his responses include any reasonable level of detail or information to be reassuring. If you’ve done any reasonable amount of research on these cameras I can assure you the Federal government will have access to this data simply because of how incredibly insecure they are.
I have mixed feelings on this , could be good could be bad,