Portland Police Bureau / Submitted photoPortland police customized their license plate reading camera system so a dispatch computer alerts officers when their cameras see a specific license plate on the road, which is what happened in April 2013, when investigators were looking for David Wendell for ID theft.

SALEM — Police hadn’t seen Bradley Robinett since the convicted bank robber allegedly tried to ram a Washington police officer with a stolen car in November 2009.

Robinett allegedly stole a Glock 9 mm handgun and ballistic vest from Seattle police and roamed the Northwest eluding capture for nearly five years after violating his early-prison release on the robbery conviction. After the near-collision in 2009, Robinett’s whereabouts were unknown.

He might still be on the run if it weren’t for a lucky catch by an all-seeing surveillance camera Oregon police agencies began installing on patrol cars around 2008.

Hillsboro police were in a grocery store parking lot in June 2014 when the officers passed a stolen Kia Sorento they say Robinett was driving. The police car’s license plate-reading camera captured the Kia’s license plate and told the police it was reported stolen. The officers arrested Robinett when he returned to the car.

Robinett’s arrest is an example of a higher-profile story that Oregon law enforcement tells when talking about automated license plate readers.

But there are more mundane cases in which the cameras are used as well.

ALPR cameras read the license plate of every passing car, scanning plate numbers of millions of cars a year and sending them to a database of other numbers. The cameras also capture color images and stamp them with time and geolocation information that is stored and mapped.

The system has become a handy tool for the Portland Police Bureau and a handful of other mostly metro departments that use the cameras. But civil rights and police watchdog groups say the program is ripe for abuse and needs oversight. Their calls over the last two years for state attention have been heard by Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, who is working on a bill that would rein in the cameras a bit.

A Bulletin review of Oregon programs similar to others nationwide shows wide discretion on how the cameras are used. While agencies say the cameras are used primarily to find stolen cars and suspects in hit-and-run cases, documents show police pulled over and queried at least one driver who may not have been the primary subject of an investigation. The cameras can also find suspended and uninsured drivers and scofflaws.

The Portland Police Bureau recently finished customizing its program so its cameras are linked with a computer dispatch that can include a wide swath of open cases, a move the department believes had never been done before.

Portland Police Lt. John Scruggs, who oversees the ALPR program there, said the readers aren’t invasive because license plates have no identifying information.

“The allegations that they make that we can track people’s personal lives is just not happening. The system is not that robust,” Scruggs said.

But that hasn’t stopped the work of Knopp and others who are trying to put the cameras under the spotlight.

“It’s also storing the information whether it provided a hit or not,” said Becky Straus, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union-Oregon.

Portland expansion

In late 2012, Portland Officer Garrett Dow had an idea that would make the cameras more useful for his department and potentially others nationwide.

The department had been using the cameras to find cars that were being stolen at an increasing rate in Portland, and early records showed the technology was effective.

Dow proposed linking the camera system with a computer dispatch containing police records. The idea was to automatically upload the records into camera-equipped police cars, increasing the likelihood police would find the car they were looking for quickly.

That change would make every officer with a camera more effective at finding suspects big and small, as long as the license plate was connected with the report, because the camera would continuously query license plate “hot lists.”

“We’re really using the actual plate-reader system pretty much to the highest degree possible,” Scruggs said.

When investigators know the license plate of a suspect, they can upload a file into the camera database so that the system tells officers in ALPR cars if they pass the license plate on the road.

That’s what happened when police were looking for David Wendell in April 2013, according to records from the case and a presentation Dow gave to thousands of law enforcement officers at a meeting in Portland last fall.

Over the course of a year, from 2012 to 2013, Wendell was suspected of nearly 100 identity thefts. He was passing bad checks at grocery stores, and Portland police were on his case.

One alert in the system told the cameras to be on the lookout for Wendell’s SUV and for officers to call Officer Barbara Glass, an investigator in the Portland bureau’s ID theft unit, when they found him.

“Wendell needs to be interviewed prior to booking and obtaining a lawyer,” the alert said. “If in possession of vehicle try to find reason to search for check-making” and other forgery materials.

Police had been looking for Wendell for four months. A camera spotted Wendell’s car days after his case was put into the system. Wendell was arrested, pleaded guilty to 10 charges and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

His defense attorney, Jason Steen, didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment on the case.

Under the expansion, Portland police also pulled over and queried a driver who may not have been the primary suspect in a criminal case.

One officer wanted information on the driver of a 2000 Dodge sedan that a camera photographed while the car was parked in front of an “active drug house,” according to another report in Dow’s presentation.

ALPR officers were told to “stop and (identify) if seen driving and send occupants’ info to” the investigator, the report read.

Police with ALPR cameras found the woman driving the car five days after the alert was put into the system.

“Since Officer Harris found the vehicle while it was occupied, he was able to (identify) the female driver. The investigation is ongoing,” the report said.

Scruggs said it’s difficult to say whether the car in that case was frequently seen at the drug house and was part of the investigation or if the investigator just wanted more information from the driver on the suspected dealers.

He also said as of 2:30 p.m. Wednesday the department’s customized ALPR list, which fluctuates, had about 20 plates, along with others from a state stolen car database.

“I can see how privacy concerns could turn up on this,” Scruggs said. “But we’re talking (about) 20 plates out of a population base of 608,000.”

About seven months after Portland expanded the program, the department also increased the number of cars with the cameras to 16, each capturing between 3,000 and 8,000 images per officer shift, according to estimates by Scruggs and Dow.

Dow, along with the team that conducted the extensive technology upgrade, was given an achievement medal in January 2014 for his idea to expand the program.

Scruggs said other departments have asked the Portland department if they can copy the upgrade, though he said he didn’t know which departments.

He said Portland is using the cameras properly, adding that the department updated its policy in recent years at the request of the ACLU to clarify that police wouldn’t send cars with cameras to religious gatherings or protests.

“We’ve never had any kind of incident happen of data being misused,” Scruggs said.

Privacy questions

Criminal defense attorneys and civil rights groups in Oregon have taken issue with different aspects of the ALPR program.

Straus with the ACLU says police unnecessarily collect information on innocent people when they conduct a dragnet for information on potential criminals.

“Whether it’s a stolen car or a person driving to church, it’s collecting that plate,” Straus said. “They are creating a treasure trove of personal information about Oregonians.”

Attorneys wonder about how pictures taken by the cameras are used in court, said Gail Meyer, a lobbyist with the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.

“They don’t let us know if in the course of our cases that, ‘Oh, we found these using ALPR cameras,’ ” Meyer said. “So it’s remained under the radar, so to speak, because there hasn’t been forced disclosure of this information.”

Law enforcement agencies are also in charge of writing their own policies and deciding how long images and time and location stamps are stored before they’re deleted from the system.

Some departments delete their images after two years, while others, such as that in Portland, hold on to them for up to four.

The lack of uniformity and outside oversight has created what Meyer calls a “patch quilt of policies” over the program.

Departments also interpret whether their policies are considered public records differently.

Clackamas County, which also adds “vehicle of interest” lists into its ALPR database, claimed this September that aspects of its policy were exempt from disclosure.

“We don’t have a policy for auditing our system. It simply does not exist. There are no results or audits. And our policy wouldn’t even let us share it with you if it does,” said Lt. Adam Phillips, Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office spokesman.

Similar to the Portland bureau, Clackamas County uses the technology to find vehicles associated with high-profile cases, such as Amber Alerts and hit-and-runs, to low-profile cases involving uninsured and suspended drivers.

Oregon City, a town of about 32,000 below the Willamette Falls, had one car equipped with ALPR cameras in 2014.

The department’s policy manual tells the officer using the camera to capture license plate images around major crime scenes to potentially identify criminal suspects later.

Its manual also says “ALPR system audits should be conducted on a regular basis.”

Support Capt. Bill Kler said audits were simply to check that the program was working correctly. After queries from The Bulletin about the audits, Kler said the department found its lone camera wasn’t correctly linking up with the database, and it stopped using the camera.

Bend Police Chief Jim Porter said the department was offered grant money to buy cameras but turned it down because the office would have seen other associated costs and he didn’t feel the cameras would be a good fit for the department.

“It’s a great concern of people’s privacy and the conversation revolving around that today in America and the fear of government,” Porter said.

State attention

Bend’s Knopp and other lawmakers want to scale back the ALPR programs and put in place state-ordered provisions to allow greater public disclosure of the surveillance programs.

The debate over the cameras’ use made its way into the Oregon Capitol in early 2014, and a bipartisan group, along with Straus and the ACLU, has identified license plate-reader oversight as a top goal for the 2015 session.

Under a bill that will be proposed in early 2015, police would have to audit ALPR programs for effectiveness. The bill will also limit how long law enforcement can store images sucked up by the cameras.

The proposed bill would also force police to post ALPR policies online in “conspicuous” view for the public.

The proposal probably will be ready in early December and ready to prefile soon after, Straus said. Knopp said data retention time will likely face the hardest pushback from law enforcement groups. The longer law enforcement is allowed to store images and data, the longer the list of plates the cameras can query from.

“I can tell you that in the Legislature, depending on which legislator you talk to, they’d be willing to accept seven days to six months,” Knopp said.

Kevin Campbell, executive director of a group representing Oregon police chiefs, has worked to scale back the proposed regulations. He outlined his opposition to an ALPR bill in testimony in February, taking issue with retention time and even the fact lawmakers used the word surveillance to describe the cameras.

“In a worst-case scenario, we would accept a six-month retention limit, but believe a two-year period would better serve Oregonians,” Campbell told lawmakers in February. Campbell didn’t respond to a request for comment on this article.

The issue is one that civil rights groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU say is best handled by the state while the federal government hasn’t updated digital privacy laws created decades ago.

It’s also an issue where some of the state’s libertarian-minded Republicans, such as Knopp and outgoing Sen. Larry George of Sherwood, link up with liberals such as Sen. Chip Shields, D-Portland.

“If the primary purpose is to find stolen cars, then we wouldn’t be getting the kind of pushback that we’re getting for retention of innocent peoples’ data,” Straus said.

— Reporter: 406-589-4347,

tanderson@bendbulletin.com