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Item # 2.

Council Meeting

Meeting Date:	12/08/2020
Department:	Police
Pillars:	Gold Standard in Public Safety
Milestones:	Improve communications and the use of technology

AGENDA CAPTION:

Present and Discuss updates to the Town's Public Safety Data Management Policy.

BACKGROUND:

On January 9, 2019, the City Council adopted the Town of Addison Public Safety Data Management Policy to provide transparency and accountability for the usage of data collected via license plate recognition and optical cameras. Changes being implemented by the Law Enforcement Support Division of the Texas Department for Public Safety (DPS) will impact the Town’s adopted policy.

As part of the Town’s efforts to utilize our License Plate Recognition (LPR) system to keep our resident’s safe, the Addison Police Department receives “field alerts” whenever a flagged vehicle (one with outstanding warrant information, reported as stolen, etc.) is detected by one of our LPR readers. The alert allows Addison Police officers to respond to the area and address any potential issues/concerns.

The DPS is implementing changes to how license plate data is accessed and shared in the State of Texas. These changes effectively result in the State taking control of all license plate data to:

protect access to the data in the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and Texas Crime Information Center (TCIC) databases, and
to facilitate the sharing of this data amongst law enforcement agencies in Texas.

The changes require the Town to sign a memorandum of understanding with DPS to access the “hotlists” that would trigger the field alerts. The change also takes away the Town’s ability to dictate with whom we can share our LPR data, one of the guiding principles Council approved as part of our LPR implementation.

Staff is prepared to discuss these changes being made by DPS and the impact on our current policy.

RECOMMENDATION:

Staff seeks Council direction.

Attachments
Presentation - Public Safety Data Management Policy
Town of Addison Public Safety Data Management Policy