You can sort the ALPR table by any of the main fields. You may also search it using the query box at the upper left of the table.

Each line in the table includes several pieces of information, starting with the name of the agency and state where the agency is located, in this example, the Brentwood Police Department in California. This is followed by the following fields:

• Direct Sharing: This refers to the number of agencies that Brentwood Police Department shares its data with directly.

• NVLS: A “Y” in this spot indicates that Brentwood shares data with the National Vehicle Location Service, a pool of data shared by hundreds of agencies that are not identified. It is important to note that even if an agency shows it is only sharing directly with a few agencies, if NVLS is checked, then it actually is sharing with hundreds through the pooled data.

• 2016-2017 Detections: This number reflects the combined number of license plates scans collected by the agencies over two years. A * next to this number indicates the data is incomplete.

• 2016-2017 Hits: This number indicates the number of times that a plate scan was linked to a license plate on a predetermined “hot list,” a sort of watch list of vehicles that law enforcement is actively looking for.

You should also click the arrow to the left of the agency’s name to expand the data. This will reveal, where available, a year-by-year breakdown of the data. You will also find data from agencies that opted to provide us with “all-time” data, as opposed to just the few years. Most importantly, this is where you will find links to the source documents that will reveal even more information about how the agencies collects data.

Note: When you see *, this means that the 2016-2017 data only covers partial data, generally just one year.

Please note the numbers contained in this table and the downloadable spreadsheet were entered manually by humans, who often were copying information from difficult-to-interpret documents. While most agencies provided documents in a uniform fashion, it became clear that some agencies did not fully understand how to manage their own software. As a result, some of the documents may include inaccurate information. If you are interested in data from a specific law enforcement entity, we recommend inspecting the source documents we have provided.

Click below to explore EFF and MuckRock’s dataset and learn how much data these agencies are collecting and how they are sharing it.

Introduction

What we learned

Download the dataset

Understanding the source documents

Help us file more requests

A caveat on the data

Header image via the EFF and is licensed under CC-BY 4.0